2020 has seen the world take an incredible shift in the way we approach work. With a greater tolerance for remote work and a heavier reliance on technology than ever, many businesses saw their future ICT strategies thrust into the present.
The changes we saw throughout 2020 were just the beginning of the move towards the future workforce. As we progress with artificial intelligence in leaps and bounds and companies invest in technology to improve productivity and preclude manual labour, the ‘workplace’ as we know it is in for some drastic changes.
As AI takes over the basic literacy and numeracy tasks in the workplace, there will be a shift in demand for higher cognitive skills such as creativity, critical thinking, decision making and complex information processing. Indeed, McKinsey & Company estimates that demand for social and emotional skills is expected to rise as much as 26% by 2030. Each industry will be impacted by technology with the skills we look for in workers evolving towards those that set individuals apart from their automated counterparts.
While many manual tasks can be easily replaced with automation such as vehicle operation and packing products in a warehouse, physical labour will endure in areas such as patient care, from assisting patients in hospital to providing aged and disability care. These roles require high functioning in human capabilities such as empathy, cultural awareness and ethics, which is why these roles will continue to be fulfilled by people.
No industry will be untouched by this new workforce, with each requiring human capabilities in different domains. Across the board, leadership will become more important than ever, with the ability to motivate and inspire teams in the changing workplace highly regarded. The healthcare industry, in addition to ethics and interpersonal skills, is expected to lean on entrepreneurship and adaptability, and banking and insurance roles will shift towards customer engagement as basic banking functions become automated.
The requirement for manual skills in the manufacturing industry is reducing at a rate double that of other industries. In place of this, relationship management, leadership, innovation and critical thinking will dominate the workforce in this industry.
We are at the precipice of a new frontier for the way we work and the way we assemble effective teams, so as we enter this uncharted territory, how do we ensure success? The Human Capability Framework exists to provide a foundation for measuring these exact skills that will shape the future workforce. With 14 key capabilities across thinking, personal and action domains, the Human Capability Framework allows employers to gauge a candidate’s ability to perform in areas such as initiative, empathy, communication, creativity and critical thinking.
As we shift towards automation with roles relying heavily on these capabilities, employers will seek out these skills and as such, individuals will be looking to upskill in these domains. Courses that are verified against the Human Capability Framework will be in high demand as the workforce looks to increase its skillset not in technical ability but in this domain of humanistic skills that set them apart from machines and AI.
If you’d like to learn more about the Human Capability Framework and verified courses, please contact us on 07 3858 1230 or info@veriskills.com