Telecommuting allows employees to work away from the mothership, but we’ve just scratched the surface when it comes to remote jobs.
As part of an effort to educate children and parents about future career opportunities, Martha Turner and her colleagues at CST Consultants predicted jobs that will exist in 2030. Among them: robot counselor and agile supply chain manager.
"Technology is a big component of the jobs of 2030, and that’s largely because it really fuels the opportunities for growth in the marketplace through innovation," says Turner, vice president at CST.
Employees already are beaming into the office via robots and telepresence technology. Here are six jobs that will take remote working to the next level.
For people living in rural areas, access to healthcare — particularly skilled surgeons — remains limited. "We can leverage robotic tools to operate on patients in remote locations," Turner says. Tele-surgery involves a combination of robotic surgery tools, scanning and sensing technologies and high-speed networks. Tele-surgeons will need an understanding of robotic technologies and video systems in addition to steady hands.
"Drones may feel like science fiction to us today, but in fact they already have some small commercial applications today," Turner says. Agricultural use will make up 80 percent of the commercial market for drones, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Farmers "are going to be able to see things and monitor their crops in ways they never have before. In the next 10 years almost every farm will be using it," Kevin Price, executive vice president of applied research and technology development at RoboFlight, tells USA Today. Drones will help farmers identify insect problems and watering issues, assess crop yields and track down wandering cattle, to name a few use cases.
Doctors are gaining more access to real-time patient data through connected devices while machines are increasingly automating parts of routine doctor visits. This means that at least some healthcare professionals will take on overseer roles, says Matthew Holt, cofounder of Health 2.0, a conference focused on new forms of medicine.
"The trend towards team-based care for most patients plus the growth of video consults ... will see the emergence of a mission control function for medical professionals," Holt says. "More doctors will devote at least some of their day to managing teams who are managing patients," he says, adding that doctors will be more location independent.
In California, A.P. history students at Redlands East Valley and Orangewood High School tune into class at Citrus Valley High, where their teacher instructs via telepresence. We’ll see more examples of teachers who connect remotely to students, making more classes available and adaptable to students’ schedules. Teachers will use additional tools to extend learning beyond the classroom. Fifth-graders in Houston recently took a virtual field trip to Mars, with a lesson from experts at NASA using Google Hangouts.
You’ve heard of — or maybe even seen — driverless cars, but what about captainless ships? Rolls Royce and a handful of other organizations are designing ships that captains would operate from a virtual bridge on dry land. These automated vessels would have little to no crew on board during deep sea legs of their journeys. Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the shipping industry, and they could be navigating the Baltic Sea within the next decade, according to Rolls Royce.
Sensors are being embedded in infrastructure from highways to water treatment plants, collecting data on traffic patterns, energy use and all kinds of indicators critical to how we run cities. A regional grid director — a title coined by CST researchers — would use this data to determine how resources are best distributed across city grids and among different regions.
For any type of remote work, employees will need to hone in on communication skills, Turner says. "There’s more of a need for you to be able to get along with diverse groups of people. You need to be able to work through different cultures and preferences for work styles," she says. "Your ability to go and not just have that technical knowledge, or specialized knowledge in your field, but be able to communicate and sell it is going to be very, very important."
