FORWARD’s reading round-up
Sally McNamara, development partner at FORWARD — The RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation — writing with director Peter Thomas and development partners Pete Cohen, Jane Howie, Sally McNamara, Inder Singh and Kate Spencer — on what we’re reading.
At FORWARD, we’re absorbing a lot of diverse information (written, audio and video) as inspiration for our work in creating an innovative learning ecosystem at scale, doing applied research and inventing next-generation skills solutions that will catalyse workforce development.
Here are some topics that are sparking our curiosity right now. We’ve added some notes and pointers, and hopefully, this will be of value as you think about future skills and workforce transformation. It’s not definitive — and given the ferocity of discussion of these issues, it could never be — but it does provide some insight into the diversity of work going on in future skills and workforce transformation.
If you want to suggest something we should include, email us at forward@rmit.edu.au
Durable skills
Durable skills, power skills, fast skills, meta-skills — there are many formulations of the skills that are predicted to be foundational for the future of work. These skills include creative thinking, originality, initiative, analytical thinking, innovation, and complex problem-solving. Cracking the code of durable skills — what exactly they are, how to teach them, how to measure and credential them and how to hire for them — is essential in an age of accelerating automation and the trend towards non-routine jobs comprising an increasing share of total employment is likely to continue. The promise is that combined with the skills to use technology effectively, these more complex cognitive skills will ensure employment and fulfilling careers, boost productivity and enhance competitiveness.
Skills gaps
The amount of training and expertise needed to meet skills gaps — between the existing skills and the economy's demands — is daunting and goes beyond minor re-skilling efforts. For organisations, it requires an optimal balance between reskilling, upskilling and bringing in people with new and different skills and knowledge. Added to this, the nature of the skills required by individuals to participate in the economy is constantly changing. To support people in their career progression — or career changes — skills need to be closely aligned with the nature of work and with broader labour market needs, and we will need to embrace greater diversity in hiring practices.
Bildung
We think a broader palette of ideas is needed to untangle the web that ties together future skills, workforce transformation, economic imperatives and personal development. One of these is Bildung, a concept embedded in the Danish educational system. The future of work is not only about learning specialised skill sets through traditional education programmes. More complex skills — how to thrive in society, the moral and emotional maturity to be a team player and have personal autonomy, and the moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation that helps people understand complex systems —rely on learning through introspection and discourse with a group of diverse people. This type of learning also continues unfolding throughout our life, with more perspectives and insights becoming available to us as we progress through the stages of adult development. As the population and workforce age, this continued investment in learning and development will be important. It also creates an opportunity for older learners to share experiences and guidance with younger learners. It’s about knowing your roots and being able to imagine the future.
Further Education
How education responds to future skills and workforce transformation is an interesting topic. It’s been observed that current education and training models are often too slow and inflexible to recalibrate the skills required, and companies struggle to find timely, relevant programs to re-skill existing workers at pace. In a constrained labour market, the window of opportunity to re-skill and up-skill workers has become shorter. What education providers offer to the market needs to be responsive to current and future skills needs, and new incentives need to be provided for participants to guide their choices towards the skills in demand. Education providers need to become more adaptive to emerging labour market demands: the changing nature of skills required for the future, the diversity of learners and learner needs, the demands of industry to deliver immediate productivity benefits as they navigate the challenges of global competition, the growing shortage of skilled workers and the pressure to innovate and to implement new technologies.
The Great Reset
We are at a crucial inflection point in the future of work landscape: the double disruption of digital transformation and the pandemic — what the World Economic Forum calls The Great Reset — has exponentially accelerated the speed at which technology and automation will be and must be adopted by all industries. In the face of what has been called ‘The Great Resignation’ (probably better in the long term called ‘The Great Re-Evaluation’ or ‘The Great Re-think’), employees are thinking more about their future career paths. They have recognised that being short-term is of no advantage as they have seen how the pandemic has wrought its effects on the economy. Now, more than ever, employees want to understand future career opportunities and what skills, competencies and capabilities they need.
DAOs and Web3.0
Blockchain is now mainstream but has yet to impact the arena of future skills and workforce transformation in any meaningful way. But DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are emerging as a new type of organisation that uses open, decentralised blockchains like Ethereum and Solana to provide a secure digital ledger to track digital interactions across the internet. As we have moved from the early Web1.0 days of the internet, through the rise of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter in Web2.0, we are now seeing the rise of Web3.0, where users rather than corporations operate new decentralised social networks, search engines and marketplaces. These blockchain-based social networks, transactions, and businesses may prove a fruitful arena for skills acquisition and workforce transformation, and Web3.0 may have a significant role as work rebundles. For example, we are likely to see old forms of organisations such as cooperatives or guilds being reinvented for the digital age in which users are rewarded for their activity and advocacy via tokenised ownership.
Lifelong learning
Learning will no longer be optional to remain relevant in the workforce at any age and stage — there is a widespread recognition that simply participating in sporadic or disconnected upskilling programs is not enough. Existing knowledge quickly becomes obsolete, so the need is to broaden our definition of ‘learning’ to include a significant and sustained effort to encourage people to learn new skills over a longer period — potentially the rest of their lives. Lifelong learning is not just motivated by the need to change jobs, or keep a job, but to engage with new and diverse learning experiences — to be an ‘explorer’. Explorers have a long-term commitment to achieving impact in a specific domain that excites them, are excited in the face of unexpected challenges and view them as an opportunity to learn and seek out and connect with others. Lifelong learning is now considered an economic imperative and one of the sources of long term competitive advantage.
Microlearning
Even before the pandemic, workplace-based learning was evolving into less formal and less structured learning and the increasing pace of skills change is driving the demand for shorter, sharper learning experiences. Now, we are seeing the idea of ‘learning in the flow of work’ emerge: this is not training as a time-out from work to visit a classroom, but on-the-job, just-in-time, job-relevant learning delivered at least partly digitally. We have seen growing adoption of LXPs (Learning Experience Platforms) that curate content and learning from different sources and create personalised and trackable learning pathways. The learning these platforms curate is in short, discrete chunks. This is attractive to employers because it directly aligns with business goals and impacts the bottom line.
Hybrid working
The future of work is hybrid — blending in-person and online collaboration. It’s here to stay — but some lessons need to be learned. Some of them are about how remote work has created new job opportunities or provided options for how, why and when to commute. But as we have all seen, remote work can result in burnout and human disconnection. A more principled and thoughtful approach is needed to address talent acquisition issues, manage productivity and build collaboration, provide learning, and ensure that well-being is at the forefront of our thinking.
Skills of the future
We think we may have cracked the code of skills of the future, but there is ambiguity like any prediction. One is that any statement of ‘future skills’ is a time-bound snapshot. Another is that each generation that enters the workforce comes equipped with very different attitudes, experiences, biases, and blind spots. This suggests that any definitive statement of ‘future’ skills is open to revision. We can crack the code for the now, but how do we really understand what future skills are so we are prepared for what comes next?
Skills-based hiring
Skills gaps require a re-think of hiring practices. In a low-unemployment economy, demand for talent outstrips supply, and employers tend to hire based on skills and competencies rather than formal qualifications. Will this create more opportunities for those who have been excluded? What does this mean for educational providers and their curricula, and will employers think more carefully about what skills they need, especially in terms of durable skills?
Digital Skills
The distinction between ‘technology’ and ‘non-technology’ companies is becoming blurred. Is Tesla a technology company or an auto manufacturer? Maybe it doesn't matter, but it's clear that what does matter is that we, as employees, are all — to a greater or lesser extent — technologists. As the Salesforce research shows, most of the workforce think they lack the digital skills to prepare them for the future.
Innovative companies
Learning is top of the CEO agenda, and many companies in the skills space are approaching upskilling, reskilling and learning in inventive ways. Here are some of them.
Collaborative Learning
Learning cannot only be a matter of individuals learning alone — and not only about acquiring narrow skill sets. People need to grow inside organisations through collaborative sharing and learning to optimally grow workforce capabilities. In the future of work, paying attention to social and relational dynamics in learning is essential.
FORWARD is the RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation.
Our role is to build an innovative learning ecosystem at scale, create new collaborative applied research and invent next-generation skills solutions that will catalyse workforce development in the future-oriented industries crucial to Victoria’s economic renewal.
We lead collaborative applied research on future skills and workforce transformation from within RMIT’s College of Vocational Education, building and scaling the evidence and practice base to support Victorian workforce planning and delivery and acting as a test lab for future skills to develop and pilot new approaches to skills training and education through digital transformation and pedagogical innovation.
We leverage RMIT’s multi-sector advantage to translate research insights into identifying workforce requirements and co-designing practice-based approaches with industry.
Contact us at forward@rmit.edu.au
