The U.S. Department of Labor marks today’s holiday to honor “the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” It’s also a chance for us to look ahead—about the future challenges of workplaces and human capital. What are the labor-related issues that leaders will face in September 2025?
Of course, nobody knows. But it’s a reasonable guess that today’s debates, about the roles and meaning of human work in a networked, knowledge economy, will become even more significant in the next ten years. That’s because a blurring of boundaries—both physical and conceptual— is forcing a rethink for every leader about how people work together to create value.
Here are four issues that might help shape your own leadership thinking about labor and work in the future:
1. Where Does The Organization End—Or Begin?
When work is outsourced, contracted, or developed through open innovation competition, can you—should you—treat the people who are making the contribution as part of the organization? What does ever-more distributed labor and production mean for leaders “taking charge” and “taking care” of workers?
Regulators are raising their hands with a few new answers: some distributed production may not absolve a company of labor responsibility. The recent “joint employer” ruling of the National Labor Relations Board, reinforced the right of unionized workers of contractors (e.g. of a cleaning service) and franchises (e.g. of a local MacDonald’s) to bargain with the contracting or “parent” company. Similarly, several “Gig Economy” and “platform” companies (Uber, Lyft, et al) are now involved in litigation about whether their independent contributors should be treated (and compensated, with comparable benefits) as legal employees. Their right to unionize is also in the courts.
Whether you believe all this is an overdue rebalancing of power between workers and management, or yet another economic burden on capitalist entrepreneurialism, it’s one more indication that enterprises are becoming extended, more fluid, and networked. Blurring organizational boundaries are challenging traditional assumptions about management control and responsibility for workers—especially beyond the periphery of a company.
Expect the debate about where “the organization ends” to become only more ferocious. Global competition and the flexibility desired by workers will drive more experimentation about how extra-mural talent is recruited, motivated and deployed. Leaders will become more creative. Labor will too. Lawyers will be busier.
2. Does Automation Replace—Or Extend—Human Work?
Since the Industrial Revolution, debates have raged about whether machines should replace human work (lower costs, destroy jobs?) or enhance it (increased productivity, shifting from brawn to brains?). With new network-based communication and sophisticated robotics, the answer increasingly seems to be “both/and”: more work is being automated and interconnected, but, with that, human contribution is also reaching higher levels of performance.
Researchers are now studying how to further optimize the man/machine relationship, so-called “augmentation strategies.” They are probing mechanical, economic and even social dimensions of how machines and people working together can achieve breakthrough productivity and innovation. As “tools become teammates”, and the human/machine boundary blurs, the old debates are transforming: now it’s how to ensure that both elements augment each other?
3. Do People Work To Live–Or Live To Work?
In an era of wide-spread unemployment and slow wage growth, getting a paycheck remains a major motivation for people work. But workforce research increasingly shows that’s not enough to spur the enthusiasm that high performance requires. Most organizations face a steep climb here: Gallup’s annual workplace survey reports that 90% of workers are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their jobs.
Today’s leaders are partly to blame. Many still structure work as if nobody really wants to be in a job—employees are monitored, reviewed, and nudged along with rewards and punishments like trained circus animals. The passion of human endeavor is not seen as an appropriate part of office life.
But many other leaders are now thinking differently. Hastened by growing professionalism, mission focus, and broadening social consciousness in workplaces, leading organizations like Zappos, USAA, Whole Foods have been focusing on job satisfaction and sense of purpose as important sources of organizational motivation. More generally, today’s younger generation of workers wants to blur work-life boundaries, and combine personal and professional goals. They want to work more freely, earning a wage but also fulfilling ambitions to contribute to the world.
The Gallup results are not necessarily at odds with these trends; the disengaged numbers may simply reflect that most of today’s work is still not designed to help people “bring their whole person” to deliver the best performance possible. But workplace innovation is underway. Experiments with cross-boundary strategic communities, social volunteer work and inter-organizational learning are now addressing many workers’ desires to grow and find more meaning in what they do. Expect more of this in coming years.
4. Is Every Worker An Employee—Or A Leader?
Thirty years ago, corporate leadership development programs were reserved for higher pay-grade managers: people with senior titles ready to become a next level up leader in the organization. As organizations have become flatter, and work more knowledge-oriented, the pay-grade requirements for leadership development are also blurring. Leadership programs are now being offered at multiple levels of organizations; and the language and culture of leadership more generally has become democratized. “Leadership” is no longer about title—it’s about initiative, identity, judgment, and values—personal qualities and skills that anyone can develop to create value for the organization. Open-style and collaborative organizations in fact expect people to be growing constantly and taking responsibility whenever required: “Everyone a leader.”
As boundaries between organizations also blur, and enterprises invest in crowd-sourcing, networked communities, and more open approaches to finding talent and innovation, leadership itself will become more situational and distributed. Meritocracy, not position or structure, will define authority; and leaders will increasingly rotate, sharing responsibility with others, depending on task.
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In September 2025, chances are we’ll all still celebrate Labor Day. But the labor we’ll be celebrating then may not be something we recognize today. Embrace the change!
[Note: minor updates were made to this post on September 8th–primarily URL links added in various places of the text.]
Originally published on Forbes.com