gearing up for the new world of work
I read some startling statistics about the labor market last week that I want to share with you.
According to the World Economic Forum, the majority of workplace tasks will be carried out by machines or algorithms by 2025. This means that roughly 75 million jobs will be lost worldwide by 2022. Now there is good news—this loss will be more than offset by the creation of 133 million new jobs.
However, this creates a new challenge: ensuring we have workers trained for this new world of work.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like no one has really figured out how to get ahead of this trend. Today, the majority of companies are overly focused on external hiring. I have always believed that poaching talent from your competitors is not a long-term strategy, and very shortly, we are going to run out of skilled talent who can do the work we need done. Unfortunately, I think this is going to hit most companies like a ton of bricks. So, what can you do to prepare for this change?
broaden focus
Most organizations are focused heavily on filling short-term gaps in their workforce, and this makes sense, as these open positions are current pain points in the organization. They are also somewhat focused on ensuring they have future leaders by engaging in succession and leadership development, as this also presents a risk to the organization that must be mitigated. But when it comes to the entire workforce, organizations are less disciplined about developing people, and tend to rely on incremental development opportunities to increase depth in current skills and capabilities.
They rarely focus on making a concerted effort to build new skills that will be required for future business growth. What if you can’t recruit externally people who have the skills you need? What will you do?
This is an opportune time for HR to get ahead of these talent trends and start preparing for the new world of work. With shifting trends, organizations need to broaden their focus to include consideration of what skills will be required in the long term and how the company can re-train existing human capital to learn these new skills. This means that every organization should be thinking about how to create a strategic training function in the organization, one that is accountable for building the critical new skills the business needs for sustainable success. I published a blog post earlier this year with some tips on how to transform training into a strategic function.
This will require contemplation about where the business plans to go over the next three to five years, as well as the identification of what human capital will be required to achieve business goals and an analysis of existing skillsets that could be re-trained to meet the new needs.
identify early adopters
Once you have broadened your focus, you need to identify key resources in the organization who can lead the way when it comes to learning and succeeding with new skillets. These will be your early adopters, who will enable you to demonstrate early success and help on-board the rest of the organization (including your leaders).
I believe there are two specific types of people who will be early adopters.
The first type includes people committed to lifelong learning. They are intellectually curious and demonstrate agility. One way to find them is to identify people who have succeeded in different industries, functions, and roles and attribute their success to listening to and learning from others. You can also look for people who are inquisitive and focused on self-improvement. Another characteristic is to find people who accept and implement feedback from others to improve themselves.
The second type is people who have the ability to use both sides of their brain. As we evolve deeper into a data-driven world, where artificial intelligence and other technologies are automating so much of what we do, it is going to be important for people to understand how to leverage data, but also how to translate the data into something useful that can be consumed and applied to achieve a better outcome. One way to identify these people is to look for technical individuals who have creative or artistic hobbies or someone who uses data to create an amazing user interface. It will be critical to equip these people with the right skillsets to guide the organization through the next phase of work.
integrate skill development
OK, so you’ve broadened your focus and targeted your early adopters. What’s next? Well, you need to plan how to build these critical new skills in your workforce. This is no easy task in today’s already busy work environment. How do you carve out time to create these skills?
Many organizations are starting to use technologies to develop creative ways to learn, whether it be breaking learning down into digestible chunks, gaming, or even virtual and augmented reality, all of which are really great. Yet, the challenge is they mostly focus on increasing depth in existing skills, not building breadth by developing and applying new skills.
So, what can be done? As we get ready for this new world of work, HR should think strategically about how it can help its talent develop new skills effectively. New skill development can’t be something that organizations expect employees to do on their own time. It must be integrated into the work environment or the organization’s future is at risk.
Just as some organizations allocate time for people to spend on their own ideas or in pursuit of charitable causes, time must be carved out to learn and grow new skills, not just increase depth in other skills. There are definitely emerging technologies that can help with this (like personal assistants and chatbots), but to get started, it could be as simple as the company allotting one to two hours every week to ensure every employee (from the CEO to front-line employees) is focused on developing new skills. I actually think most customers would love this and appreciate how the organization is treating its employees. Imagine the positive impact this would have on your brand and ability to attract top talent.
change is coming
Huge changes are coming, and many of us are going to have to fight to stay relevant in a new world of work. These changes have the ability to impact all levels of the workforce, not just one segment. As HR, we have the opportunity to set up our organizations for long-term success by getting ahead of these talent trends.
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