About the Future of Work Institute
The digital age and the workplace
Digital technology is reconfiguring work more rapidly in a much larger scale than any time in history. All around us, in sometimes subtle ways, sometimes in very visible and significant ways, digital technology is changing work and our social, economic, and political worlds.
Digital technology influences what we do daily. It influences how we travel, track and monitor our well-being, how we interact with family, and friends, and colleagues. It no only influences how we engage with other people and share knowledge, but how we use all types of machinery and physical objects.
Harnessing technology provides us the opportunity to thrive like never before.
Challenge questions
• What does a career look like across the lifespan?
• What are the roles of work design and leadership in delivering benefits and mitigating threats?
• What individual characteristics are required for work/career
success and how do we help people develop them?
• What are the implications for recruitment, selection, training and development?
• How will senior managers use data analytics to inform
strategies around health, safety and performance?
• How do we keep people in work longer and optimise their contributions?
• What will volunteer work look like?
Why the Institute?
Our world class researchers and staff have a diverse background involving analytics, skills, work design, human systems integration, and public policy. We have a great deal of experience working with diverse industries. We know the challenges of working in complex systems with competing priorities and shifting goal posts.
Importantly, our focus on work is a connection point for some of the most dynamic areas of research in the university. Engineering, science, and computing are creating groundbreaking advances beyond our capacity to imagine their possibilities. Health sciences are revolutionising the way we develop and use health services. Humanities researches are opening new avenues for understanding our society and expressing our humanity in the digital age. Business and law are shaping the economic and legal structures that will ensure positive growth in a rapidly changing world.
Through industry partnerships on collaborative projects we engage all these areas to improve the experience and value of work in our society. Together we can understand what skills are needed for the future, how will they be developed for everyone across the life course, what organisational systems will enhance or hinder work as a source of thriving and growth for people.
The Future of Work Institute’s mission supports the broader vision of Curtin University to transform lives and communities through education and research. We are building partnerships with researchers, industry groups, alumni, and others who value the critical role that work plays in all our futures.