There is a justifiable fear that technological change will lead to mass job losses. Some estimates indicate that automation in the workplace will create more roles than it eliminates. A survey cited in the WEF’s 2018 Future of Jobs report suggested that by 2022 automation will create 133m jobs and displace 75m. However, whether technology creates more jobs than it destroys is a moot point when taken against the shift in employment created by technology.
Of course, over the ages, technological advancements have led to changes in the way labour is deployed several times over. We’re currently experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, but a key difference compared to previous shifts is that the current shift is occurring much more rapidly.
Changes in work triggered by past revolutions meant that new labour market entrants had to acquire different skills from their predecessors, with excess and out-of-date skills leaving the market as employees retire. Now, even workers who have relatively recently acquired their skills may find that they are forced to re-skill while still in employment.
There’s no question that businesses are recognising the change in the labour market, with 66 percent of large companies surveyed by McKinsey saying that addressing skills gaps caused by automation is a top ten business priority.
Of course, employers can simply opt to rehire, making redundant those workers whose skills are no longer needed. Doing so may be difficult in markets where labour is tightly regulated, but even where dismissing workers is easy it is worth considering the alternative: reskilling existing workers.
Companies that invest the resources in workforce retraining to help their workers adapt to a changing environment stand to gain on several levels:
Good employers have always invested in the skills of their workers via continuous professional development (CPD) programs, for example. However, the scale of the task ahead is far bigger than before and tweaking skills around the edges won’t bring the desired results.
The wholesale changes underway mean that employers cannot simply run computer literacy, CPD, and other relatively minor upskilling programs. Reskilling must be as wholesale as the change faced by workers, and few companies have the resources to undertake a skill-building operation at that scale.
Instead, companies can partner with a vendor that has the technology know-how to build the smart teams that can support today’s technology-driven working environment. With the help of a partner vendor companies will be able to retain much of their existing workforce while simultaneously ensuring that their workers grow the necessary skills to keep competing in a rapidly changing world of work.
ELEKS can help companies rapidly scale up technology-centric skills, reducing resourcing costs by up to 50%. We’ll help you quickly scale up to meet your goals. Get in touch with us.
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