A SNEAK PEEK INTO THE FUTURE OF WORK

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 Driven by the need to cut costs, improve efficiency and at the same time remain competitive, firms across the world have had to keep innovating and leveraging on technology.

Will Purcell- a marketing specialist describes innovation as, “… the process that an individual or organization undertakes to conceptualize brand new products, processes and ideas or to approach existing products, processes and ideas in new ways.” Businesses that embrace innovation are likely to enhance their brands, increase efficiency, stay ahead of disruption and ultimately realize growth.

If latest developments are to go by, then, there is no gainsaying the fact that technology takes center stage in most innovative processes across firms. A case in point is that of Uber, the popular ride sharing company. By combining modern technology with flexible payment and pricing strategies, while simultaneously offering a beneficial platform for prospective drivers the company was able to take over the taxi industry by storm when it was launched in California in 2009. Currently, Uber operates in 10,000 cities globally and boasts of 1.64 billion trips on the platform during the third quarter of 2021.

Restrictions on movement and the disruption of supply chains occasioned by the ongoing pandemic have also necessitated that companies combine innovation and technology to stay afloat.

 At the beginning of the pandemic, Nike used predictive analytics to accurately mark down goods and reduce production early on to pare down the impacts of the pandemic on its sales. By so doing, the company was able re-direct products from physical stores to e-commerce sales, driven in part by direct-consumer-online sales through its own training app. As a result, Nike sustained only a marginal drop in its sales as compared to its competitors.

Given the extent to which innovation and technology impacts on firms, workers need to re-adjust to fit into this disruption by acquiring and developing skills that enable them to remain relevant in the face of these sweeping changes and anticipate and adjust to future changes.

As much as globalization has integrated global trade, it has also increased competition between firms. In such a competitive global market, creativity is crucial for survival. A recent study carried out by the Jerome Chamber of Commerce indicates that the top skill that CEO’s are looking for in workers is creativity. The findings of the study indicate that 60% of the polled CEO’s fingered creativity as the most important leadership quality, compared to 52% for integrity. Additionally, a study of job postings in 2019 by LinkedIn revealed creativity to be the foremost soft skill companies were looking for.

According to the latest World’s Economic Forum report approximately 50% of all employees will need reskilling as adoption of technology rises. Moreover, the report also estimates that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines. On the brighter side however, an estimated 97 million jobs that are adapted to the new division of labour between humans and machines may emerge. Additionally, the report stresses that the greater adoption of technology will mean in-demand skills across jobs change over the next five years and skills gaps will continue to be high.

This shift necessitates that first and foremost, employees enhance their skill set to fit current technological demands. Historically, businesses have controlled cost and mitigated uncertainty during economic recessions and downturns by taking up automation which reduces the share of jobs involving routine tasks. Moreover, McKinsey & company estimates that, as a result of the pandemic, the share of total work hours expended using physical and manual skills will decline by 2.2 percentage points while time devoted to technological skills will jump by 3.3 percentage points. The silver-lining is that, online learning platforms such as Coursera have been and continue to be vital for workers seeking to re-skill and upskill. Between April and June of last year, Coursera realized a fourfold increase in the number of people enrolling for their online courses.

Apart from enhancing and diversifying their skill set, the ideal worker ought to build on creative and critical thinking as well as problem solving skills. As per the earlier cited  World Economic Forum report the top skills and skill groups which employers anticipate to rise in prominence by 2025 include, critical thinking and analysis, problem solving skills and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.

The future of work belongs to workers who will aptly adopt technology and harness creativity to drive innovation in their work places

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