Digital Workforce

The fast-moving digital world is rapidly causing changes to the nature of work and skills. This has resulted in the transformation of career pathways, disrupting conventional business roles. There is the biggest challenge of the growing digital economy is building a digital-ready workforce in an ever-changing business environment. In this regard, enterprises need to develop a compelling value proposition for talent, which covers training in procuring new skills, development opportunities, and rewards.

In a new report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, entitled “The changing nature of work and skills in the digital age”, digital technologies do not only create and destroy jobs, but they also change the task that people perform on the job, and how they do it. Most jobs that have expanded over the past seven years combine digital skills with above-average social interaction, such as with external clients or within a team. The report noted that the increasing use of computers has standardized work procedures in some jobs, while minimising the need for direct social interaction in some sectors, such as in financial intermediation or real estate.

According to the report, new technologies will reshape millions of jobs in the EU. Millions of jobs are at risk because of automation, especially, those that involve routine tasks. Technology creates new types of jobs. But it is difficult to predict where and how many. And digital technologies change what people do on the job, and how they do it.

The digital era is moving at a striking pace is not only transforming the nature of work but also fundamentally changing the way organizations perform a business, requiring them to explore new ways of thinking about service delivery as operating models are designed.

Digital Skills Gaps and the Impact of New Talent Economy

With ever-evolving advances in AI, robotics and other disrupting technologies happening at an unprecedented rate, the very nature of the jobs that need to be done and the skills needed to do them, is also changing faster than ever before.

According to the World Economic Forum, at least 133 million new roles generated as a result of the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms may come into view worldwide by 2022. The demand of technical skills like programming and app development, along with skills that computers can’t easily master including creative thinking, problem-solving and negotiating will also surge.

This rapid transition in job characteristics and the heightened demand of digital skills are dramatically impacting the future of work. The emerging different work patterns, the diverse structure of employment contracts such as payment structures, and an augmenting passion for flexibility are leading a major transformation in the current working relationships and defining the future patterns of work.