Future skills
Few weeks ago, I asked my students: “How many of you are still going to the Bank today?” From a class of 65 students only two raised their hands as most of them did online banking. Today a majority of people do not go to the Bank anymore; “On- line” Banking and Automate Teller Machine (ATM) have replaced the traditional bank with people. I asked “How many of you are still going to the bookstore to buy books today?” Only eight raised their hands as most bought book via On-line bookstores. The bank and bookstore are only examples of how fast Information Technology (IT) has transforming the business world. These changes are affecting the way people do their jobs now and how they will work in the future. Advancing in IT is adding a new dimension to every workplace. Products can be designed in computers, components are broken down digitally, and information is sent to manufacturing systems which distribute to teams of robot who perform the works. With voice recognition technology, people do not need to type into the computer key board anymore but speak to the computer and tell it what to do. Today computer can recognize voice commands to perform works. If you have an iPhone, you probably use Siri to tell this phone what you want. IT business systems that analyze, organize, automate and communicate with each other have been used effectively in many companies for years. These and other new technologies are changing every job, at every level, in every company.
Today workers at all levels are teaming and collaborating across all functions, all departments, and all business units, using the newest technologies to achieve the business goals. To meet this new challenge, company must focuses on better preparing their workers with the skills, experience and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century work environment. Twenty years ago, many U.S companies were outsourced works to lower labor countries and got rid of a large number of employees that could not change. This transition allowed them to modernize their factories, updated their machineries, improved their business workflows, streamlined their business process and trained new type of “knowledge workers”. Now as the transition is about to complete, a new trend has emerge: The re-shoring or bringing back many jobs that they have outsourced since their manufacturing are now completely overhauled with new way of doing business, with high quality, high productivity and much less people. For example, it took 450 people to build a car in the U.S in 1970 but today with new equipments and automated process, it only requires 75 people to build a car. The labor cost today is less than thirty years ago, even with investments in new machineries and robots, company can sell it for more and have higher profits. If you look at the manufacturing area, you can see how IT has changed the factories, the business, and so many things just in the past decade.
In this new working environment, skills are a competitive advantage. The old rule: “If you work hard, follow company rules, you have a job” has been replaced by the new rule: “If you continue to improve your skills to what we need, you have a job.” This lifelong learning rule is a response to the technology changes as workers must continue to upgrade their skills to keep up with changes. There is a clear advantage to people who can learn new skills and stay employable over the lifetime. In the past, to encourage people to work hard many companies have the rule of “Lifetime employment” but today it is changing to “Lifetime employability”. In other word, lifetime employability is a strategy where company encourages continues training, education to upgrade workers' skills and experience levels.
The question is what will happen to the traditional bank? Some still exist today but not many, it is predicted that within ten years, all traditional banks will cease to exist. What will happen to the bank tellers? They will be gone the same way secretary and typist were gone when personal computer with word processing software were replacing the typewriters. What will happen to low labor manufacturing companies? They will be gone the same way modern farmers replaced farm animals such as buffalos with farming machines. What will happen to low labor workers? They will not have jobs if they do not learn new skills. We have seen evidence of this event as unemployment is rising in many countries when the transition is happening but workers are not prepared for it.
The best way workers can keep their jobs is continue to learn new things. In the past, they learn skills in school that served them throughout their career; many are working one job for one company for their entire life. Today, it is no longer valid as technology changes quickly and continuous learning is the only solution that adds new knowledge, new skills to any individual throughout their life. However, continue learning is not something easy as it must be taught early to build a habit of lifelong learning. This is where education system must change.
Today many students go to school with the goal of passing tests and achieving degrees. They believe a degree is a ticket to lifetime employment. However the work environment has changed and no longer the same as yesterday's work. Workers who depend solely on degrees will largely be disappointed. Among the unemployment, a majority of them do have degrees and experiences but they just do not have the skills that the industry need. To build a good habit of lifelong learning, students must build a good habit of reading as early as in elementary school. By having good reading habit, students will read more, learn more and with access to the Internet and education websites, students will develop a broader knowledge. Reading is the key to lifelong learning and must be encouraged as good reading students are always willing to learn more things. As technology often grow exponentially, people will need to be responsible for their own skills as changes are taking place inside the course of a career.
No one can predict exactly how jobs and workplace will change over the next decades but it is certainly will not be the same. Just look at how much our world has changed in the past five years, there is no reason to think that things will remain the same. In this fast changing world, either you move with it or you will be left behind. Even if you stand still, you will be left behind.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
