5 Essential Skills You Need To
Keep Your Job In The Next 10 Years
Automation may
affect half of jobs. Here are five areas to develop to keep yourself employed.
With everything from
how we collaborate to the technology we use undergoing enormous transformation,
many believe that the future of work will look very different in 10 years.
By some estimates, roughly half of U.S. jobs
will be potentially affected by automation in the near future. So what are the
skills we need to build now to remain employable over the next decade? While
specific abilities and knowledge will certainly vary from industry to industry,
there are some overarching trends that will affect most of us says workplace
futurist Jeanne Meister, a partner at Future Workplace, a New York
workplace consultancy. Here are five skills to start building now to maintain
your marketability over the next decade.
"The big challenge for a lot of
people today is that they typically learn something and they assume that what
they learn is going to carry with them for the rest of their lives," says
Jacob Morgan, author of The Future of Work:
Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization, and cofounder
of The Future of Work Community, an online membership
organization exploring how the workplace will change. With the workplace
changing so quickly, it’s essential to develop systems to not only monitor
those changes, but to distill the information and training you’ll need to keep
up with them.
That means staying abreast of industry developments, taking
classes, attending trade events, and following thought leaders who are talking
about your sector. It also means being observant about the day-to-day tasks and
functions that matter and how they’re changing, separating anomalies from
trends.
Two trends are converging that will
force us to get comfortable collaborating in new ways. First, companies are
using more freelancers and
soloist services—the so-called "gig economy"—so it’s important to be
able to work effectively with disparate teams. In addition, employees can
spend more than quarter of
their workdays reading, writing and responding to email. Any process that
time-consuming is ripe for disruption, Meister says.
Employees can spend more than
quarter of their workdays reading, writing, and responding to email.
And it’s happening. Platforms like Yammer and Slack cut down on
the flow of messages in your inbox and keep project versions, information, and
updates in one central, searchable location, she says. She says companies will
increase their use videoconferencing, much to the chagrin of many who work from
home and take casual workdays to the next level. "This is a way for people
to get comfortable with each other faster," she says.
Sure, you have a LinkedIn profile and
you’re careful what you put out there on Twitter. But marketable employees are
going to need to take a more holistic view of what their online brand is,
says Bala Iyer, information technology professor at Babson
College. In addition to the requisite social media parameters, knowledge workers
and others whose employment recruitment has an online component need to show
their expertise through participation on sites like Quora or industry-related
sites where they can share their thinking on key issues. "Those things
have become more relevant in terms of when people try to assess how good you
are at something," he says.
Brand-building and other entrepreneurial skills will also be
important as more workers shift to the gig economy and freelance work. To
compete on a regular basis for the next job, you have to have a body of work
and online capital to back up your pitch, he says.
Whether it’s a wearable device that can help you do your job from
the road, learning how to interact with machines equipped with artificial
intelligence, or the onset of automation in your office or other workplace,
remaining employable will require embracing rather than eschewing tech changes.
If robots are coming to an assembly line, the next step is to learn what the
robots can’t do and gain new skills there, Morgan says. That may mean learning
programming or becoming familiar with the human support that automated systems
need.
"You need to be aware of what’s going on the in the world.
Sometimes, we close ourselves off," he says. Pay attention to what’s
happening in the most advanced workplaces in your field and prepare. That way,
you’ll be ahead of the game when the changes come to you.
It sounds trite, but the one thing machines will have a tough time
doing is building relationships, Morgan says. Developing emotional
intelligence—empathy, embracing vulnerability, building strong connections your
co-workers and your network—will go a long way to keeping you highly
marketable, he says.
"We are very good, in our schools, at teaching people the
strategic aspects of how work should get done, how to build strategies, how to
compete, how to do all that sort of stuff. We don't do a good enough job
teaching people the human, the relationship side of business," he says.
Looking for the next changes and remaining ahead of the curve in
learning about them will be essential to remaining among the most marketable
employees. In addition, following trends and thought leadership in your own
sector and ensuring that your skills are staying up to date will also play a
role. Finally, paying attention to the human side of work—the area that
machines will be most challenged in replicating, can be the ultimate way to
keep your job opportunities strong.
GWEN MORAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3060813/the-future-of-work/5-essential-skills-you-need-to-keep-your-job-in-the-next-10-years
No comments:
Post a Comment