It’s common in HR circles today to talk about being strategic partners rather than just the “Personnel Office” that processes time sheets and vacation requests. Hopefully, those days are over, and your HR professionals are helping develop a talent strategy that aligns with your business strategy. In doing so, they are should be spotting the trends of the future so you can get out in front of them today.

But of course, talent is not just a concern for HR; anyone in a leadership role should be working to make sure their talent needs are met, and that means watching for emerging opportunities and challenges affecting the availability of skilled employees.

As we look at the world around us today – not just the talent markets, but also the shifts in economic conditions and political values – it’s clear that we did not foresee the impact of changes in the past, changes that have had plenty of unanticipated effects. For example:

As more women started entering the workforce, the lack of family-friendly policies meant that many women felt they had to choose between having a large family vs having a small one (or even not having kids at all). One result of that is the steady drop in birth rates across the more developed Asian countries; after 30 years of decline, we are now seeing a talent shortage across much of Asia, and a demographic shift toward more elderly citizens and fewer in the workforce who can help support them.

The industrialization of less developed countries, and their continuing evolution from agricultural economies to a mix of agriculture and manufacturing, led many companies to shift their facilities out of developed countries and toward emerging economies. While that’s great for shareholders and customers, many employees were displaced, and without a plan for retraining them into another industry, many ended up worse off than before. Add in the effects of automation and improved leadership and production techniques – TQM and JIT had an impact after all – and many of these folks were left behind. Today’s changing political winds in many developed countries can find some of their origins in this overlooked effect of a positive change.

Similarly, increased focus on environmental concerns, from the American Clean Air Act through the Kyoto Accords, meant the emergence of new energy sources and cleaner technologies that displaced many workers in the coal industry and other traditional energy sectors. While these are necessary changes, the impact on workers was either ignored or simply not anticipated, and so we see plenty of unemployed people from older industries, while many spots in modern companies go unfilled.

In an ideal world, leaders and HR professionals would look at changes like these and “wargame” them, looking into the future at the possible effects they could have and taking steps to mitigate any potential adverse consequences. It’s probably hard to feel motivated about possible effects 20 years from now when you’re dealing with this quarter’s revenue goals, but let’s face it: the effects of changing are coming faster, and having a bigger impact, that they did in the past. If you aren’t looking ahead, it will be hard to recover when things turn bad, and they can turn bad a lot sooner than you expect.

So this begs the question: what is happening now that we are not seeing? What trends are emerging now that will have a long-term impact we may not yet understand?

The gig economy continues to grow at a faster rate. While there have always been gig workers, books like The Four-Hour Workweek and Free Agent Nation showed people how easy it could be to start down that path, while apps like Uber gave us the tech. There has already been some initial pushback…taxi regulators are changing the rules, and courts are considering whether gig workers are really independent contractors or actually employees. But what does all this mean for “fuzzier’ concepts like employee engagement or corporate knowledge? How does professional development get managed? What are the long terms effects on talent?

Manufacturing employees used to have to worry about automation, but now everyone does. As new forms of robotics replace hands-on repetitive tasks, and artificial intelligence emerges that can replace knowledge workers, where are all these people going to go? You may think “I’ll be retired by then, doesn’t affect me,” but you may not be; these changes are coming faster and faster, and besides, even if you are retired, if no one’s working then who’s paying the taxes that pay for your government-supported health care and pension? What’s the likely impact as automation affects more and more jobs?

Will climate change affect how your employees work? HSBC analysts suggest that many businesses are not making adequate preparations for changes in the climate. Will climate change determine where you open your offices? Will it increase the demand for remote work? Should you expect adverse health effects from pollution that drive up absenteeism? Regardless of where you think climate change is coming from, there’s a general consensus in the scientific community that it’s happening, so sticking your head in the sand is not a good idea (even though there may be more sand in the near future if things heat up).

These potential effects may seem a long way in the future, but the impact of changing birth rates and other changes was finally felt and they have created plenty of challenges. While planning for future possibilities shouldn’t take all of your time, it also shouldn’t take none of it. Be aware of emerging trends and think about the impact they may have on you and your company. The results might hit you in the face sooner than you think.