AI is changing the shape of our careers
The linear career model is already out of date
How do careers unfold over the course of a lifetime in this era that we’re in?
So many of us grow up learning this predictable sequence: learn, enter the workforce, build expertise, move upwards and eventually retire. This outdated linear model informs so many of our educational and personal career planning choices, as well as the organisational systems we create, such as succession pipelines and development programs.
Professor Lynda Gratton’s excellent work on the 100-year life has shown as we live and work for longer, the familiar three-stage model of education, employment and retirement becomes less useful and needs to evolve to the concept of a multi-stage life, with more movement between working, learning, caring, experimenting, resting and beginning again.
From linear progression to a 4-Quarter Life
Longer lives are changing the demographic shape of society from a pyramid (many younger people at the bottom and progressively fewer older people above them), into something that looks like a square (because the base of young people is narrowing, while the middle and upper age groups are expanding).
Gender and generational thought leader, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, believes this demographic shift means we need to rethink careers, how we contribute over a lifespan and how we progress through our lives. She calls it the 4 Quarter Life.
Q1 is Grow, when we learn and become increasingly independent;
Q2 is Achieve, when we build careers, families, expertise, security and status;
Q3 is Become, when the question shifts from proving ourselves to deciding who we now want to be; and
Q4 is Harvest, when we integrate our experience, share what we know and make meaning from what we have lived.
Now add AI to this transition that was already underway. Where does this leave our understanding of how careers actually unfold?
AI and the 100-year life
AI is already reshaping roles, redistributing tasks and changing which skills organisations value. Some jobs will expand, some will contract and many will be redesigned. Based on what we’re seeing in our work at EVEN Careers, it’s becoming pretty well-understood that everyone needs to learn, transition or reinvent themselves more frequently across much longer working lives. But will the opportunity to do that be distributed evenly?
Women’s careers are already more likely to include periods of caring, reduced hours, career breaks and nonlinear progression. Women are time-poor and the requirement for additional learning can be yet another thing to add to their already very full plate. If access to new technology, capability-building and emerging opportunities follows existing patterns, AI could make established career inequalities harder to overcome.
Career agency coupled with systems thinking
The future of careers cannot only be a conversation about individual adaptability, it must be coupled with a good hard look at the organisational systems surrounding people. For example:
Do career structures reward narrow versions of progression?
Do we recognise skills gained outside conventional roles?
Can people move laterally, step back, reskill and return without being penalised?
Are managers equipped to have career conversations that extend beyond the next promotion and that take a long-term view of the person’s potential and interests? See last week’s newsletter to explore more.
EVEN Careers is exploring the AI impact on women's careers through Women, Work & AI, a national research initiative into how AI is reshaping women's careers, leadership and wellbeing.