Image courtesy of Pixabay / geralt

mashable.com | Article Link | by James O'Brien

Five years isn't a long way away, but human-resources experts predict significant changes within the workforce over the next half-decade.

A sizable shift is coming as millennials take their seats at businesses large and small, and Baby Boomers simultaneously either retire or modify their work styles to reflect increasingly flexible and mobile opportunities.

To get some answers, we spoke to analysts from different business and staffing sectors. With their expertise, a picture of what business leaders — and employees — can expect from their professional landscape emerged. Here are five key points from that conversation.

1. Freelance employees will approach the 50% mark

The freelancer is on the rise, and if you ask proponents of the "contingent" (freelance) economy, they expect that by 2020 some 40% of the workforce will soon be made up of contract-only employees. "This is in part because millennials don't want to stay in one job forever, but also in part because companies prefer to try out employees before committing to them," says Stephen Robert Morse, co-founder of SkillBridge, via email. "These changes will affect the white-collar economy, just as they have already disrupted the blue-collar economy (e.g. Uber)."

2. Flex-work becomes a new normal

We already live in a largely work-anywhere world, thanks to the cloud and mobile tech, but shifting employee demographics will drive further alterations to the way we think about clocking in.

Read more...