How to re-skill yourself and prepare for the future of work

According to a recent survey conducted by LinkedIn and Capgemini, nearly 30% of professionals believe that their skills will be redundant in the next one to two years if they aren’t already.

Another 38% stated that they believed their skills will be outdated within the next four to five years.

Let’s start by saying that automation will not take away jobs that will cause mass unemployment.

Instead, tasks within jobs are being transformed by automation and artificial intelligence, fuelled by competitive environments in which businesses operate in.

The only caveat here is that if your job is 100% manual or that automation can take over all tasks that you are currently doing, then automation will eventually take over your job.

The impact of automation is real

While some people may argue that automation may lead to new types of jobs being created in place of displaced workers, others say that automation will destroy more jobs than it actually creates, as shown in the figure below.

Rather than worrying about the media or news hype, we can do something about it by future-proofing ourselves and taking proactive action to secure your jobs and incomes.

It should be noted that humans are resilient and have been adapting to changes for centuries.

To do so now will require a bit more planning. People do not plan to fail, but they fail to plan for their future. Without a doubt, complacency kills jobs and our job security and income streams.

How automation will impact your job security will depend on a number of factors. These factors include:

1. Country you live in – For example, technologically advanced countries like Japan, Germany, and Korea have high levels of automation when compared to developing countries. The country you live in will also determine how country economics, unemployment rates, demographic changes, and underemployment can impact your employment status and long-term position.
2. Industry you work in – For example, the transportation industry has a lot of innovation like driver-less vehicles compared to fine arts.
3. Job or occupation you have – For example, if you care for the elderly, then there’s not much automation in labor-intensive jobs when compared to truck drivers.
4. Skills and experience you currently have – For example, if you are a truck driver, then your job could change significantly by 2035 when compared to a personal coach.
5. Education type and level you have – For example, if you have a university degree, then you are better prepared for the future of work and for acquiring high-level skills that will be in demand in the future.
6. Company you work for – For example, the company you work for must have the capability, capacity, and resources to automate parts of your work when compared to a small family or cash-strap business.

Countries, where the potential for automation is the highest, are shown in the figure below, according to McKinsey.

The country information can give you a general indication of the level of automation you can face in the country you currently living and how much country-wide influence it has on your industry and personal circumstances.

Within each country, industries with low digitisation and high labor intensity can be great candidates for automation, as shown in the figure below, according to McKinsey.

Each industry is analysed from the perspective of assets, usage, and labor. Taken together, the information will give you some insights as to the level of digitisation you can face within the industry you are currently working in.

You will need to tailor the response to your personal circumstances.

McKinsey also found which skills (and jobs requiring those skills) would least likely (items 1 to 3) and most likely (items 4 and 5) to be transformed by automation by 2030:

1. Higher cognitive skills include advanced literacy and writing, quantitative and statistical skills, critical thinking and complex information processing. Doctors, accountants, research analysts, writers, and editors typically use these higher cognitive skills.
2. Social and emotional skills or so-called “soft skills” include advanced communication and negotiation, empathy, the ability to learn continuously, managing others and being adaptable. Business development, programming, emergency response, and counseling typically require these soft skills.
3. Technological skills include everything from basic to advanced technological skills, data analysis, engineering, and research. These are skills that are likely to be the most highly rewarded as companies seek more software developers, engineers, robotics, and scientific experts.
4. Physical and manual skills encompass tasks that could be performed by relatively unskilled labor like drivers and assembly line workers and skilled workers like nurses, electricians, and craftspeople.
5. Basic cognitive abilities like literacy and numeracy are needed by workers such as cashiers, customer service staff and those involved in low-level data input and processing like typists and clerks.

In future-proofing ourselves, always strive to acquire higher cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, and technological skills. You may require further studies to acquire these, in-demand, future of work skills.

It will be worth your effort as you build a strong foundation upon which you can secure your job and income.

If you’re currently working in a job that involves significant physical and manual skills or basic cognitive abilities, then there is a higher likelihood that automation and artificial intelligence could automate a large portion of your job, transforming it into something completely different or even eliminating it completely.

Given that we are already growing our use of technology at home, it is a matter of time when we will be increasing our exposure to more technology usage in workplaces. It’s not a question of if, but when.

An Aruba survey showed that some 71% of employees said they would welcome fully-automated workplaces.

Without a doubt, technology will have a positive impact on organisations as it improves operational efficiencies, enables faster decision-making, enables better customer experiences, and improve employee experiences.