Major challenges facing our young people, graduates and students today

The workplace is ever-changing. Employers are demanding increasing flexibility, adaptability, short-term contracts, and project-based work, while workers are increasingly demanding job security, higher wages, and better work conditions.

Both from the supply and demand side of the work equation, we are experiencing very challenging times ahead for both employers and workers within the context of increasing business competition, automation, and ageing population.

Unfortunately, this gap will only increase over time in the future.

Without a doubt, there will be more over-qualified job seekers and graduates going after fewer available job vacancies due mainly to automation and the ageing population. As a result, more young people especially will increasingly be forced into spending more time in higher education.

In the process of acquiring more head knowledge, they will also be incurring more student loan debts that will weigh them down financially (and socially), causing them financial stress. This has also increased mental health issues experienced by many young people.

On paper, unfortunately, all college or university graduates will look the same. This creates tremendous competition and under-employment among younger job seekers.

Apart from spending time and money on their education, they graduate without acquiring the right employable (job-ready) and practical skills and experience that employers are desperately seeking to give businesses the competitive edge over other businesses.

In response to a very competitive business environment, employers are constantly restructuring and practising just-in-time hiring and contracting. They are increasing their use of short-term skilled workers or contractors as and when the need arises without the headaches of fixed overheads and permanent workforces. This gives employers the business flexibility to pivot and adapt to the ever-changing customer needs and competitors actions.

The use of temporary workers and automation will continue to put downward pressure on salaries and wages. There will not be much salary growth as under-employed workers will be forced to take on shorter-term or lower-paying jobs just to pay their bills and survive.

The rise of temporary, part-time or self-employment will significantly decrease the need for on-going full-time employment. Job security is dead unless workers can continuously adapt and future-proof themselves. Being future-ready and job-ready are now the keys for future job security for all workers.

To be hired, workers, contractors, and freelancers must constantly upgrade their skills, experience, and value-creation. They must respond positively to the constantly evolving needs and requirements of employers as businesses attempt to meet the profitability goals for their stakeholders. This is the only way to keep workers in employment for longer periods.

Many school leavers don’t really know what they want to do in the future. This is understandable. As a result, an increasing proportion will make a job or career change, change their field of studies, or even drop out of colleges and universities altogether. They need our help to minimise any negative impact on their future.

Just-in-time continuous learning through flexible short courses (online virtual learning and offline bricks and mortar), and continuous on-the-job learning and training will become a norm as new skills are constantly created to keep up with advances in technology, evolving business models, and organisational restructure.

The role and relevance of colleges and universities in preparing our future generations for work and employment must be scrutinised and debated. They must respond to the ever-changing need of the demand side of the work equation because graduates are using less than half of what they have learned in universities at work.

The half-life of knowledge is also decreasing. Technology is generating significant amounts of data where now jobs like data scientist have emerged.

As jobs are constantly being transformed through increasing automation and intense business competition, the traditional just-in-case method of learning and teaching will eventually fade away as people will only need to acquire and learn the required skill and knowledge as and when it is required by the employer for completing the work at hand. Let us not bother about the future now because we don’t know what future skills will be required.

Automation will constantly transform or eliminate jobs and careers. Tasks within the jobs and skills needed to perform jobs will look very different in five years.

Many students and school leavers will end up working in completely new job types that have yet to exist while they are school. Skills learned today will be redundant tomorrow.

As lower-level jobs and tasks are constantly being automated or transformed with advanced technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence, new job titles, work processes, and industries will be innovated and created across nearly every economic sector. The negative impact on workers will be huge as this could mean massive unemployment for many workers.

With every danger, there will be opportunities. This will force people to constantly acquire above-average education, training, and experience just to keep up.

Many people will have to shift to higher-skilled jobs away from the manual or physical work as they are replaced by robots.

To do this shift and transformation well, students will have to increase their capability and capacity to perform well even while at school, college or university. They must aspire to gain relevant employable skills and experience by doing voluntary work, internships, or even taking a gap year straight after school.

This could also apply to current workers who need to constantly transform themselves with future-ready skills, experience, and knowledge.

Apart from having work-related and technological skills that could be transferred to other jobs, there will also be growing emphasis on soft skills (e.g., social and emotional skills), and enterprise or higher cognitive skills (i.e., problem-solving, communication, teamwork, creativity, etc.) as interaction with technology and machines become more prevalent.

Humans will have to specialise in areas where robots and machines don’t have a competitive edge over humans. For example, understanding human emotions or creating and sustaining meaningful social and human interactions.