The impact of the pandemic and the key questions we should be asking
The Future Is Now
It’s no secret that institutions of higher education and businesses have been grappling with the impact automation and digital technologies have had on the way people learn and work. And, although robots and artificial intelligence have played a role in rethinking and reshaping our approach to work, a phenomenon even more disruptive accelerated the arrival of the future of work: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, efforts to keep pace with innovation and disruption affecting nearly every facet of workplace productivity provided the opportunity for organizations to assess their ability to prepare for, and evolve with, the changing employment landscape. And then, in the blink of an eye, that “opportunity” turned into an “imperative.”
Seemingly instantaneously, employers and employees were required to adapt to new technologies and new ways of working. The swiftness with which many organizations adapted to these changes demonstrated the necessity of a nimble workforce that is prepared to both meet current demand and anticipate and adapt to future change.
The Great Skills Gap » explores the shifting of the skills and preparation that employers need from their talent pool, and how both higher education and business can collaborate to keep pace to support a workforce that is technically proficient and exceptionally agile in their capacity to think and act creatively and quickly learn new skills. As we all learned throughout the pandemic, agility, creativity and adaptability—along with a growing set of technical skills—are and will remain essential to being a successful worker in the future of work.
Collaboration Is Key
In his foreword, PepsiCo Chair and CEO Ramon Laguarta stated that “the fallout from COVID-19 has made it clear that technology will drastically change the jobs of the future.” Likewise, it will drastically change the future of higher education.
As described in the book, forward-thinking colleges and universities are reshaping instruction and the curriculum to ensure they invest learners with skills appropriate to the 21st century economy. It’s critical for institutions of higher education to find ways for young people to lay the foundation for a lifetime of meaningful, engaging work. Through their education, learners must be prepared to meet the immediate requirements of their workplaces, as well as the uncertain demands of the future.
There is, however, a gap between higher education and the workforce, which was reflected in the Strata-Gallup 2017 College Student Survey. While nearly all—96%—of chief academic officers in colleges and universities believe their institution is effective in preparing future workers, just 11% of business leaders strongly agree with them.
To close this gap, institutions of higher education must collaborate with the business community to align educational programs with the long-term needs of employers and workers. This collaboration offers the best way forward for ensuring colleges and universities understand what skill sets employers require and keep pace with the fundamental changes occurring in the workplace. And, in turn, workplaces must provide a framework that enables workers to retool their skills continually throughout their careers to prepare for the reality that the jobs we know today will be reinvented into something new in the future.
Change Is Constant
opens with the premise that the exploding scope and pace of technological innovation in the digital age is fast transforming the fundamental nature of work.
Providing the opportunity and infrastructure to engage in upskilling and retraining is of paramount importance. In The Future of Work After COVID-19, McKinsey estimates that more than 17 million workers in the United States will need to switch occupations by 2030—a whopping 28% more than had been forecast in pre-COVID-19 research. Telework, Big Data, automation and AI are here to stay. Workers need to be prepared for increasingly higher-functioning jobs that require human elements like critical thinking and creativity.
Ravi Kudesia, an assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University, studies mindfulness and creativity in the workplace. His work references an opinion study from 2010 in which 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries suggested that creativity is the single most important leadership quality. According to his research, managers often fall into routine and habitual ways of doing business that prevent them from adapting to changing conditions and recognizing new opportunities.
This is no longer acceptable.
Relying on routine and old habits is at odds with the pace of change predicted for workers in the U.S. Furthermore, a side effect of improvements in healthcare and technology is longer life spans, and with that longevity an individual’s career may last upwards of 60 years.
How often might one’s skill set need to be revisited or reimagined over the course of five, 10 or 20 years?
How can higher education and business anticipate these changes so that workers are able to lay that foundation for a lifetime of meaningful, engaging work?
How might an emphasis on lifelong learning, through expanded educational opportunities, enable workers to upskill to be technologically literate?
How will the traditional reliance on a higher education degree change as ever-evolving technology demands reframe what skills are needed for success on the job?
How might higher education and business unlearn entrenched practices in favor of innovative approaches that are more inclusive?
Debates on this topic are sure to carry on, but the future of work is here now, and demands innovative, transformational change on behalf of business and higher education to bridge the great skills gap.
Start reading The Great Skills Gap »
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