What do you want to be when you grow up?
We’ve all been asked this question. We’ve been asked it by our elders since we were in pre-school. We sometimes continue to be asked it throughout our 20s and our 30s (though somehow it is not with the same enthusiastic anticipation, but rather a concerned undertone of ‘when will you get serious about your future?’).
And it’s a legitimate question as, throughout history, what we do in life has been fundamental in defining our identity and our place in society. In fact, occupations and roles tended to be for life and were often passed on from one generation to the next.
So what do you ask a pre-school child, or even a teenager, today? Whether they want to be a fire-fighter, a teacher, a police officer, a doctor, a cook, a farmer, an architect, or an artist? Or are these questions outdated given the way jobs, work patterns, career trajectories and employment contracts are changing? So, more to the point, how do you rephrase this question? How do you reconsider it altogether so that it continues to make sense with the digital revolution underway?
The European Commission’s recent Reflection Paper on the ‘Social Dimension of Europe’ takes stock of the ways in which working life and societies are being fundamentally transformed by the combined effects of technological progress, the collaborative economy and online platforms, the growth of the services sector, globalisation, demographic trends and migration.
Automation, robotisation and the Internet, in particular, have transformed the way work is performed and remunerated; the way work relations are structured; the way the workplace is organised.
And there is much speculation and well-placed concern about how these trends may even further affect the future of employment — for instance with the spread of artificial intelligence and other novel technologies.
Two things are certain, however, as amply documented by research undertaken on the topic of the future of work by international organisations, universities, think-tanks and global consultancies. The first is that people will have to cope with an increased pace of change, acquiring and re-acquiring new skills and adjusting to new business models multiple times. The second is that, even if some occupations will remain life-long careers, all — from the farmer to the baker, from the vet to the nurse, or from the civil servant to the member of the armed forces — will be affected by the digital revolution and the wider trends underway.
Despite this knowledge, we still find that 45% of Europeans have only basic digital skills, even as all sectors of the economy are becoming digital. Even more worrying is that around a quarter of the adult population in Europe still struggles with reading and writing or poor numeracy. It is therefore hardly surprising that fewer graduates are finding jobs in areas related to what they have studied, while employers are finding it increasingly difficult to employ people with the right sets of skills.
These are the realities that Europe’s Member States, but also European companies, schools, training centres and universities need to take stock of. These are the prospects we need to prepare Europeans for.
The White Paper process on the future of Europe and the Reflection Paper on the ‘Social Dimension of Europe’ precisely intend to bring some of these challenges out in the common European public space so that two open questions are addressed: Which of these challenges should our countries tackle together? And what added value can EU-level instruments provide in this effort?
Once we can agree on the answers to these questions, we can then set ourselves on a course for a future of work that is rich with opportunity.
In the meantime, when we ask pre-schoolers what they want to be when they grow up, we’ll probably keep on getting the response ‘doctor’, ‘pilot’, ‘teacher’ for quite some time still. Though we may become more used to hearing ‘blockchain developer’ or ‘artificial intelligence engineer’ just as often.
But more importantly, given that we’ll be living the ‘100-year life’, what is certain is that we will have ample opportunity to ask ourselves ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’ well into our 40s and 50s even (and there will be no concerned, raised eyebrows looking down on us then; there may actually be enthusiastic anticipation once again!).
