For HR communities, one of the most important skills that professionals can have is to be futurists, said Professor Lynda Gratton (pictured) at the London launch event of the Future of Work (FoW) Consortium Phase 3.

The challenge to be futurists is a result of the turbulent economic environment we will all be working in continuously from now on, Gratton said. She cited the 33 trends from the previous FoW findings that combine to bring about such dynamism into work.

“Firms and recruiters will need to look at different ways of recruiting,” Gratton told Recruiter. “The two biggest global recruiters — ManpowerGroup and Randstad — are members of our consortium. It’s interesting that they’re part of all of this.

“The labour market is such an important part of the future — who’s available, where they are, where they want to work.”

She explained that the skills gap, a ‘war for talent’, was apparent across all sectors and gave the example of 3m vacancies in US, despite rising long-term unemployment. However, she said, in India “businesses are all over it”, with global IT giant Wipro training around 100,000 teachers last year in IT skills to cope with the talent shortfall in IT.

And despite the perceived slowdown in hiring, next year Indian global business solutions provider Tata Consulting Services, where the average age of an employee is 24, is alone planning to recruit 60,000.

Gratton cautioned that Western corporations especially should take note of future trends. With baby boomers set to retire and Gen Y numbers well below that of Asia, the demographic of their employees is going to be turbulent.