This commentary highlights key changes needed in the education, training, and reskilling domains in order for us to prepare the labour force to be ‘future-ready’. People would be required to fill in roles that complement new technologies, and there are foreseeable challenges in matching current skills development to those roles.
The author opines that the collaboration challenges of the current education system and businesses are due to both entities having completely different set of priorities and goals. Businesses desire to operate in a quicker pace to meet business goals, while educational institutions tend to be slower to change.
These are four recommendations that higher education institutions and businesses could act upon, according to the author:
- Zoom in on skills that make humans more ‘human’
- Focus on skills to collaborate with – not create – robots and AI
- Stop creating, and start curating training and teaching content
- Make training immersive, personalised, and interactive
Read the full article on Channel NewsAsia: Commentary: Confidence to face an AI-dominated future requires preparing Singaporeans for jobs not yet created
Analysis:
Evidently, there are jobs that have not been created yet and education institutions will be slow to catch up in terms of providing adequate training if we stick to traditional ways. Innovative management thinking and practices can drive changes necessary to meet future needs.
Previously, internships were deemed important to provide students with exposure to real work challenges and networks. However, the two different priorities of education institutions and businesses have resulted in internship opportunities that do not meet the intended outcomes. Some – not all – businesses want to hire interns mainly to do work at cheaper costs, without adequately providing a proper development structure to meet learning needs, which is detrimental to the needs of the workplace of the future.
Beside new entrants into the job market, older employees also have a role to play in the labor force. In the second recommendation, the author proposes to focus on training employees to work with technology instead of just creating it. Implicitly, it also means that older employees must not be forgotten or left behind in the workforce and they need to receive re-skilling trainings to stay relevant.
Leveraging on existing technologies is a skill and mindset that the future workforce needs to adopt. There will be many new technologies to employ, and humans will need the adaptability and flexibility to learn new skills and processes, more so now than ever, as technology development deepens and widens.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- How confident are you that your education would prepare you for jobs of the future?
- What does it take to feel prepared for the future?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘broached’: raised (a difficult topic) in discussion
- ‘purview’: the scope of the influence or concerns of something
- ‘perennial’: enduring or continually recurring
Picture credits:https://unsplash.com/photos/FMArg2k3qOU