This month we have taken the opportunity to throw back to an article we posted exactly a year ago. It is as relevant, even more so now, as it was then as AI appears to be the “centrepiece” story in the media for Business right now.
Last year we interviewed Mrs. Angharad Holloway, head of Talbot Heath School about the importance of preparing for tomorrows jobs that are not yet here today and giving younger generations the skill-set required to deal with the technological changes in future industries.
“According to the World Economic Forum (January 2018) and the Future Of Jobs And Skills report, 65% of children today will end up in careers that do not exist yet”
Whether our ever growing technological advancements are something that fill you with excitement or dread. The big question is, are people ready? Do we have the tools and training in order to embrace AI and future technologies into our day to day lives in the workplace?
Do we even understand it or how it is going to affect our work or our chosen industry?
AI and other advancing technologies can be a daunting idea for people of all generations!
With the retirement age extended and people working later into life, workforce’s can become a magical multi generational group where different skill-sets and attitudes can really help teams to cross-skill and even up-skill collaboratively.
Some may worry their job could be taken over by AI and others may simply wonder how they will adapt to using it. What does it look like to your business and how will you move forward in implementing it when necessary?
The importance of providing support and training and plenty of opportunities for your team to Up-skill and gain confidence in change is more necessary now than ever. Mrs Holloway highlighted this point last year that seems to be as relevant now as it was then.
“The ability to adapt and embrace change is critical. It could be approaching tasks in a different way, adopting a flexible mind-set and seeing challenges as an opportunity and not a threat. The future is not about learning for AI, bots and automation. It is about learning, confidence and communication.”
Our team recently attended Social Media training from our one and only Fleur in order to keep our Online presence flowing after she leaves to embark on the next exciting step in her journey.
At RISE we try to consistently train and regularly attend Networking events such as “Startup Grind”, “Women in Tech”, “Resilience Training” and “Wellness Wednesday” that has just launched at Barclays Eagle labs to constantly develop in order to keep Relevant and Knowledgeable in our industries.
Interestingly enough, with our Social Media training, we found that we struggled more with our Self Confidence in our ability rather than the actual process of posting on Social Media.
Using our “soft skills” we are able to support each other and help each other gain confidence in areas that we had no previous experience in, collaborating as a team to cross-skill rather than outsource.
To quote our previous article, Back in 1998, Papert said:
“The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school.”
This idea was also highlighted previously by Mrs Holloway:
“We need to explore the importance of soft skills,” she highlighted. “We have a system where everyone is judged on tangible data and how people perform in an exam, under time pressure. Everything is linked to exam performance, which is narrow minded and aggressive.”
The importance of Communication, Self Confidence and being able to learn from criticism are great ideals to teach our younger generations, as well as the Technical user side of learning, and are ultimately, necessary tools in helping us to move forward and “not get left behind” as things advance.
“The future is not about learning for AI, bots and automation. It is about learning, confidence and communication. Critiquing has to be standard within education. People need to be able to fail.”
So I guess the question now is, how do we obtain a balance between learning the Technological skills we need to move into the future whilst adopting the necessary “soft Skills” in order to progress together, as a Collaborative Community.
