The world is at the doorstep of an automation age. The technological advancement, adoption and diffusion are increasing at a much faster rate than ever in the history of mankind. This is believed to be the fourth industrial revolution, and this time it is completely unpredictable. Experts in the field have no clear idea about the future of technology and working conditions. They believe that this time it is different from previous industrial revolutions history has ever witnessed.
As firms and governments across the globe are adopting new technologies, they are developing new working milieu that requires a completely different set of skills. It has been estimated that, on average, 40 to 50 percent of presentday jobs are at risk globally. Experts keeping an eye on the changing conditions claim that students in primary school today would be doing jobs in the future that presently do not exist. Even today in many developing countries, people are doing jobs that did not exist three decades ago. For example, in China, 100,000 data labellers are working on different platforms. I guess most of the readers probably may be hearing this job title for the first time. Another example is India where four million app developers are working and earning a decent living. To prepare ourselves for the change coming in the wake of technological development, we need to understand its key dimensions.
The first and foremost dimension of the change is that digital business is rising. You no longer require large assets and physical presence to start and grow a new business. Access to the internet and various other technologies has eliminated these barriers. The previous statement can be testified from the following example. IKEA is a Swedish company that was established in 1943 and had to wait for 30 years to expand across Europe. After seven decades, it reached the annual sales revenue having a worth of US$ 42 billion. On the other hand, Alibaba, a Chinese firm, through the use of digital technology, reached one million users and above nine million merchants in just two years. In a short period of 15 years, it crossed sales revenue of $700 billion.
Businesses thriving through digital marketing are creating new opportunities. Even small firms are going global and are growing within no time. In Chile, Jordan, Peru and South Africa, the dominant firms are younger than offline firms in the market. Similarly, nascent business startups are gaining popular traction across China are dominant on Alibaba.
The first and foremost dimension of the change is that digital business is rising. You no longer require large assets and physical presence to start and grow a new business
Second, artificial intelligence via robots and big data is replacing humans in the labour market. According to a World Bank report, presently 2.6 million robots are operating worldwide in which 1.4 million were added in 2019.
As companies are adopting these technologies, thousands of workers are losing their jobs. Foxconn Technology Group, which is the world’s largest electronics assembler, fired around 30 percent of its workers after the introduction of robots in their production processes. Sberbank, which is the largest bank in Russia, is making 35 percent loan decisions through artificial intelligence, and in five years the ratio is expected to reach 70 percent. Bank robot lawyers have replaced around 3,000 legal workers in the legal department. A tech firm in China named Ant Financial is using big data for assessment of loan agreements instead of hiring and paying thousands of lawyers.
Keeping in view the above data and analysis, several questions arise. Are we ready for the change? What will be the skills required in the future? How will firms work? How will the education system require adjustments? Answering all these questions may not be possible in this short article but somehow a sharp insight about future requirements can be grasped.
The first and foremost important tip for future workers is that skills will be high in demand compared to knowledge. Content knowledge will be important but as Google knows everything and it requires one to just type in a question to get the required information, the real talent that will be required will be that what someone can do with that knowledge. The second tip to catch up with the digital world is that you have to plan your career in T style, which means that if you specialise in one thing, you need to have know-how and skills in many other areas as well.
The third thing is that the future is expected to have more frequent changes than ever in the history of work so relying on your graduation degrees only will be unwise. Keeping in view the rigidity of our education system and curriculum, in particular, one will have to rely on short courses after graduation to succeed in career pathways. For meeting all these requirements, access to the internet will be inevitable. There are several platforms providing skills, training and knowledge online, and participation on these platforms will determine your survival in the future workplace.
According to MIT research, there are four main components of the skills required in the future. First, future workers will need to work with people from different cultures, either on the internet or physically by working outside their native land. The worker will be required to deal with people from different cultures. Second, the workers will require knowing basic computer programming and social media management tools. As there will be an overwhelming amount of information coming to mind every day, the workers will have to learn about how to organise filters to manage the most relevant information.
The third component is a collaboration where the workers will need to work with others on a personal level and work with or lead the team virtually/remotely. This component will require teamwork, leadership and socio-behavioural skills. The fourth component is having an agile and adoptive mindset that is open to new ideas and aware of new developments and solutions. Meeting all these dimensions of required skills will be a big challenge and only through a lifelong learning approach, one would be able to survive in the future workplace.
The final and most important aspect of the changing nature of work is the rise of the gig economy. In the gig economy, the organisation hires independent workers for short term assignments through online platforms. At this stage, it is hard to be precise about the size of the gig economy. However, according to an estimate, around 84 million freelancers are working across the globe, which makes it around three percent of the total labour force in the world i.e. 3.5 billion. To meet the skill required for the gig economy, several independent learning providers are rising across the globe. Andela, a US company, has trained around 20,000 software developers in Africa who, after getting trained by the company, work with the same company in the gig economy.
To sum it up, only those who have a yearning for learning and have a critical mind will be able to catch up with the working environment coming in the wake of the digital revolution.
The writer has been working in development sector for previous nine years under projects funded by national and international donors