Did you know that you will probably work for 80,000 hours of your life?

Over the course of this term, our heads of department have been exploring the future of work and what that may mean for us preparing our young people for their next steps.

As part of this we have spent some time unpacking the changing nature of work. Two of the key messages that have come out of this are - 

• The rise of smart machines. We have already seen the impact on our own personal lives and they have the potential to make our work lives safer, easier and more interesting. On the flip side, there is also the potential for displacement for human workers though should also offer new possibilities.
• The decline of the full-time employee. Today the average US employee holds 11.7 jobs in their lifetime (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015) with people piecing together a "career mosaic" consisting of a variety of jobs and work experiences. Globalization has opened up the employment market in many industries already; something very apparent with the earthquake rebuild. Taskification, the breaking down of formal jobs into discrete tasks, is also becoming more apparent in our world with the rise of Uber just one example.
  

Generational attitudes towards the nature of work have also changed with young people more likely to embrace a range of careers in their life-time. This means that age old question "What are you going to do when you finish school?"  is often more difficult to answer than in the past.
April McLennan is a young Christchurch woman who in answer to that question, asked herself another question "What am I passionate about?" You can hear a little bit about her journey post-school by watching this video.