Automation and AI technologies will give a boost to massive skill shifts

The pace of change in terms of both technological advances and skill requirements is expediting. Machines working alongside humans are no more clandestine today. Most complex workplaces have already employed robots and automation technology that not only assists human workers but also enables them to bolster their productivity. In such scenarios, workers will need to adapt to cognitive skills. According to McKinsey, human employees will need technological, social, and emotional skills. Besides, they will need to deepen their existing skill sets.

Companies must also revisit and rethink how they can organize their work as cognitive technologies are starting to occur. They must ask questions about the influences cutting-edge technologies like automation, and AI will bring and determine which technology they will require most and process ahead accordingly to position themselves in an automated world.

Shaping the Workforce of Tomorrow

Indeed, automation will have an impact on future jobs and the workplace. If deployed correctly, automated technologies will significantly benefit workforces, and people will interact effectively with ever-smarter machines. These technologies and human-machine interaction will bring substantial advantages in the form of higher productivity, GDP growth, improved corporate performance, and new prosperity. They will, however, also alter the skills required for human workers, according to McKinsey.

Demand for higher cognitive skills, particularly creativity and complex problem-solving, will see a huge surge, along with skills like social and emotional that machines lack. In other words, sustaining the world of automated machines, the future workforce must have human intelligence and decision-making, adaptive thinking and complex problem-solving, social intelligence and virtual collaboration; cognitive load management; and organization-wide service orientation, and more.

Powering the Workforce Through Skills Training

In its recent report, PwC noted that the future of workforces would result from complex, changing and competing forces. Some of these forces are certain, but the speed at which they unfold can be hard to envisage. The report stresses that regulations and laws, the governments that impose them, broad trends in consumer, citizen and worker sentiment will all influence the transition toward an automated workplace. And these changing trends will determine the future of work in 2030.

The report further identified some megatrends that are reshaping society and the future of work. The economic shifts that are redistributing power, wealth, competition and opportunity worldwide; the disruptive innovations, radical thinking, new business models and resource scarcity impact every sector. In order to lure and retain employees, customers and partners, organizations will need a clear and meaningful purpose in the years ahead.

Business leaders should proactively plan how to prepare their workforce for the skills of the future. Conversely, employees should capitalize on resources to actively pursue new skills and future-proof their careers. They also must incorporate specific domain expertise to become multi-skilled and conversant across more than one domain. In a McKinsey survey, through 2030, the number of hours workers spent using advanced technological skills will soar by 50 percent in the U.S., followed by 41 percent in Europe. Demand for advanced IT and programming skills will witness unprecedented growth, the company estimated.