The future of work: How to future-proof the skills in your organisation
The future of work
‘The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.’
Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister, said this in his keynote address at the World Economic Forum in 2018. True to this sentiment, the world has changed exponentially since then, and continues to do so.
In the face of constant, rapid change, what will determine what work will look like in the future? This guide will look at what the research says are the trends, the drivers of change, and the skills and the behaviours every organisation should address now to future-proof their business.
The future of work: drivers
Research shows that two trends stand out when looking at the current drivers of change; these will have the biggest impact on the skills we will need in the future:
Automation and AI
Demographic changes
While Australia is facing a lower risk of job loss due to automation as compared to other countries (36% against 46%; OECD, 2021), there is still a significant percentage of jobs that could disappear. The Australian National Skills Commission emphasises that reskilling will be the key to success for future work.
With demographic changes, ageing population will be one of the biggest challenges in Australia (Treasury, 2021). It’s estimated that by 2060-61, the ratio of working-age people to those over 65 will fall from 4.0 to 2.7. Population growth will potentially be slower; predicted at 1.3% instead of 1.4% growth per year.
When you combine these trends, organisations are facing a smaller workforce who will need to be highly skilled, agile and able to deal with continuous change.
The future of work: skills
Demographic changes and increasing adoption of automation and AI will increase the demand for the following groups of skills:
Health and care skills
data and digital skills
Higher-order cognitive skills
Social influence and communication skills
HEALTH AND CARE SKILLS
The increasing proportion of people over 65 and slower rate of population growth will increase the need for workers with caring skills (National Skills Commission, 2021). These skills include providing health care, administering medical treatment, assisting and supporting clients, among others. The research suggests that more hours per week will be devoted to health and care than to any other skill family.
DATA AND DIGITAL SKILLS
Logically, data and digital skills are and will be highly sought after. Randstad Sourceright (2022), a global HR services company, identified artificial intelligence/machine learning, cloud computing and big data as the top 3 in-demand skill clusters. A similar finding was reported by the National Skills Commission (2021), placing data and digital skills as the fastest-growing emerging skills. These skill needs have also started to permeate occupations outside the tech industry. McKinsey (2019), a global management consulting firm, estimated that an increased need for technological skills won’t be limited to advanced IT skills. They anticipate that people will be spending 66% more time using technology in 2030 than they were in 2016, with some of that growth attributed to basic digital skills. For example, their report suggests that workers in healthcare, retail and transport industries will spend 75% more time using basic digital skills in 2030.
HIGHER-ORDER COGNITIVE SKILLS
In addition to digital skills, there will be an increased need for higher-order cognitive skills, such as complex problem solving and critical thinking (National Skills Commission, 2021; World Economic Forum, 2020).
Complex problem solving enables people to navigate constantly changing environments and achieve goals that are not well-defined. Given the current pace of change, this skill will be essential for people to tackle modern business problems.
In turn, critical thinking, a capability that allows people to analyse, interpret and evaluate information and then form a judgement, will be essential to making sense of the world proliferated by AI-generated content and information.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Social influence and communication skills are essential for effective collaboration and leadership. McKinsey (2019) estimated that Australians will spend 43% more hours using their social and emotional skills in 2030 than they did in 2016. A similar prediction was made by the National Skills Commission that placed communication skills in the top two skill clusters with the largest projected growth till the end of 2025.
These statistics might contradict what you’d expect in a digital and data-driven work environment, but there are good reasons for these skills to grow in importance. Research that looked into the automatability of skills showed that communication and collaboration are one of the hardest skill clusters to automate. The need for these skills will not go away because they are tied to our fundamental psychological need of ‘relatedness’ that drives us to seek connection with other people.
The future of work: summary
In summary, this means the skills organisations have today are not the skills they will need tomorrow. One of the key strategic advantages for organisations will be their ability to reskill their current workforce, so the skills they have in the future align with the objectives of the business.
This will require a fundamental rethink of the way organisations deal with change and build capability.
The current approaches to change management and learning and development that are in place in many organisations are outdated; they’re not up to the future skills challenge. Frontline teams and leaders in many organisations are already feeling overwhelmed by the velocity of change they have to process, without adding any reskilling into the mix.
Creating a learning culture
Organisations that will be the most successful in meeting the future skills challenge will be those that build a true learning culture. A culture where learning is valued and seen as mission critical, not a thirty minute elearn module that is a tick and flick exercise. While transitioning learning to digital formats might be seen as an easy fix that is easy and cheap to roll out, particularly with the increase in hybrid working, it’s only a small part of the puzzle. If learning isn’t applied on the job in pursuit of performance objectives, it has no value.
So what does a learning culture look like?
Building a learning culture
Based on GRIST’s 30 years of experience working with large customerfocused organisations, the following characteristics set organisations with a learning culture apart from those that don’t.
They translate strategic objectives into a skills needs analysis
This identifies the gap between the skills they have and the skills they need. Strategies are successful when there are the skills to execute them. Organisations that know this build a capability plan into their strategy to ensure the skills required to execute are there when needed.
They break skillsets down to micro-behaviours*
Micro-behaviours can be learnt and applied over short timeframes, on the job, to improve performance immediately. This means teams are consistently building capability by taking small steps rather than waiting for a centrally delivered training event.
They demonstrate that learning is valued
Development should be valued as highly as any other objectives. This can only be done by building it into organisational systems and processes: job descriptions, scorecards, reward and recognition, criteria for recruitment and promotion, and most importantly, operating rhythms. Organisations that do this maintain focus on learning and development, even when they are working through critical incidents. This makes them more likely to achieve their strategic priorities through whatever changes and challenges they’re hit with.
What is a micro-behaviour?
They build a fair and reliable system for evaluating the skills of their teams
A fair and reliable system is one where everyone is clear on what they need to do, how they can improve, that their efforts will be recognised, and that their skills connect and contribute to their team and the organisation’s objectives in a meaningful way.
They develop leaders who have the mindset and capability to support their teams to develop
These are leaders who:
• Understand that unless they support, mentor and coach their teams on a regular basis, that change and capability development will slow down. This approach is very different to quarterly development conversations or performance reviews; this is about daily, weekly, monthly feedback and on-the-job development.
• Translate performance objectives into new skills and behaviours, then help their people acquire and demonstrate them through role-modelling and deliberate practice.
• Know how to undertake efficient, impactful coaching and development conversations that focus on helping their team build capability one microbehaviour at a time.
They hold their leaders accountable for the time they spend developing their people
Organisations who truly hold their leaders accountable look at the focus, frequency and quality of the time leaders are spending with their people. They invest in systems and processes that ensure everyone can see how quickly capability is developing and what leaders are doing to support it.
Tips for tackling new skills
The pace and magnitude of change coming your way might feel overwhelming. At GRIST, we find that focusing on small, easy-to-action steps makes the change more manageable and helps achieve the desired outcome faster; especially when coupled with deliberate practice.
The concept of ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ posits that if you keep making small improvements on a continuous basis, they will add up to a significant improvement over time. This improvement is not linear but exponential. The kind of improvement that makes a difference between good and great.
Let’s say you identified that your team needs to work on communication skills. After observing your team in action, you see that they’re not communicating effectively when they’re handing work tasks between each other. The impact of this is that there’s often rework and sometimes, mistakes are made that could have been avoided. Pointing this out to your team would create some awareness of the problem. Discussing the impact this is having on their performance could motivate them to do things differently. But to truly make a behavioural shift in your team easy and immediately actionable, you need to go one step further: you need to identify the micro-behaviour they could put in place.
What is a micro-behaviour?
Micro-behaviours are what they sound like: small, discrete behaviours – but more importantly – they have 4 key characteristics. They are:
Observable: Can be seen or heard and easily assessed
Repeatable: Are not a one-off action but can be practised and repeated
100% in the control of the individual: Able to be immediately actionable
Predictive: Indicative of the result you want to see
Now imagine you’re in your team members’ shoes. Instead of hearing: ‘you need to communicate more effectively’, you hear ‘as a team this week, we’re going to work on asking more open-ended questions, to help us gather more information on what’s expected, so there’s less rework down the track.’
It’s clear, isn’t it? It’s also completely in your team’s control. And if they all did it – you would expect it would make a big difference to the communication issue you’re trying to solve.
You can apply a micro-behavioural approach to anything your team needs to upskill in. Get your team involved in what this could look like. Stay small, keep practising, and you’ll soon see big results.
Conclusion & further reading
At GRIST, we simplify change and inspire learning so people and organisations thrive.
We believe
Conversations are the lifeblood of an organisation
Small, simple changes made frequently deliver big results
Leaders are the single biggest influence on people and performance
And we leverage these three things in every program to deliver real return on your investment in learning.
Drive productivity and performance while enhancing employee engagement
GRIST is a change management consultancy that specialises in the people-side of change. We’ve been doing it for 30 years. Our programs drive behavioural change that is reflected in real-world performance results while developing skill, boosting engagement, lifting motivation and helping your people achieve their goals.
We strive to make every conversation count, in your organisation and ours.
What differentiates us
Over 70% of our work is bespoke. Each client has unique challenges that sway learning content for change programs to be fit for purpose. GRIST translate strategy into micro-behaviours, enabling learners to see how each behaviour they demonstrate contributes to their success and your organisation’s purpose. GRIST solutions are easily and immediately implementable and ensure the programs we create always deliver measurable productivity and performance success. If you need your capability development and learning curriculum to deliver scorecard performance, you must talk with GRIST.
