COVID - 19 Pandemic: Accelerating the Future of Work
The Future of Work can mean many things. I have
participated in and listened to future of work conversations over the last few
years. Evangelists of the Future of Work and researchers have delivered
keynotes and published reports respectively actively over the last 5 years.
They sort to create awareness and sensitise us about the hurricane of hurricanes
about to hit our careers, lifestyles, workplaces and our economy.
As defined in several reports, the future of work is:
“Automation, digital platforms,
and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work”, accordingly
to McKinsey
“Automation, advanced
manufacturing, AI, and the shift to e-commerce are dramatically changing the
number and nature of work”, according to Quartz
These definitions are coined based on a backward trend
analysis of what the implications of these technologies according to the 4th Industrial Revolution will have on our workplace, lifestyles, and economies at scale. These
leave conflicting information from various experts allowing for plenty of room
for debate around what impact automation technology like artificial
intelligence (AI) and robotics will have on jobs, skills, and wages.
According the Future of Jobs Report published by the World Economic Forum in January 2016, “Disruptive
changes to business models will have a profound impact on the employment
landscape over the coming years. Many of the major drivers of transformation
currently affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact
on jobs, ranging from significant job creation to job displacement, and from
heightened labour productivity to widening skills gaps. In many industries and
countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or
even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate.
By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering
primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types
that don’t yet exist.1 In such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the
ability to anticipate and prepare for future skills requirements, job content
and the aggregate effect on employment is increasingly critical for businesses,
governments and individuals in order to fully seize the opportunities presented
by these trends—and to mitigate undesirable outcomes”
Beyond these conversations was the need for an
implementation of framework that will keep governments running, businesses in
continuity, people in their jobs, academic institutions becoming more agile in
their response to industry human capital demands and most importantly, people
realising that they are not prepared for the future.
Did COVID-19 Accelerate the
Future of Work?
The sudden emergence of the Novel Coronavirus a.k.a
COVID-19 identified the need that enterprises including governments must
increase corporate resilience and help ensure community well-being by embracing
virtual collaboration tools and practices.
Adopting social distancing, partial and total lockdown
in almost all countries affected, has forced organizations and government
agencies to perform all work virtually in response to the spread of the virus.
What does this mean for businesses? How will organization continue to work and
create value in this new environment? Will this be a short-term anomaly or a
long-term trend?
Although some companies already had a Work from Home Policy in place, managing a large scale of remote employees and that too
in such urgency can be overwhelming. This change may have come to stay and as
Socrates rightly said, "The secret of change is to focus all of your
energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
The success of this new normal will be dependent on
the governments, industry, academia and people.
The Role of Government
In June 2019, the International Labour Organization’s
187 member States adopted the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, calling on the Organization to pursue with unrelenting vigour its
constitutional mandate for social justice by further developing its human
centred approach to the future of work, which puts workers’ rights and the
needs, aspirations and rights of all people at the heart of economic, social
and environmental policies
Less than a year later, the
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 ) has plunged the world into a crisis of unprecedented scope and scale
that has made the imperatives set out in the Centenary Declaration even more
urgent as the international community engages in a collective endeavour to
tackle the devastating human impact of the pandemic.
While restoring global health
remains the uppermost priority, it cannot be denied that the strict measures
required have caused massive economic and social shocks. With the prolongation
of lockdown, quarantine, physical distancing and other isolation measures to
suppress transmission of the virus, the global economy is sliding into a
recession. As supply chains disintegrate, whole sectors collapse and
enterprises close, more and more workers face the prospect of unemployment and
loss of their incomes and livelihoods, while many micro- and small enterprises
are on the verge of bankruptcy.
First, only by balancing support
for enterprises, on the one hand, with support for workers and their families,
on the other, will governments be able to address properly the crisis’ human dimension.
Governments must tailor their support packages so as to save businesses and
jobs, prevent layoffs, protect incomes and leave no one behind. It is necessary
to focus on all those who work – including the self-employed, own-account
workers and “gig workers” – whether in the formal or informal economy, whether
paid or unpaid, and of course also on those who have no way of supporting
themselves.
Secondly, the urgency of the
crisis and the immediate need for action must not serve as a pretext for jettisoning
the normative framework. International labour standards, together with
the Decent Work
Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , provide a strong basis for efforts at the national level to “build
back better”. These international instruments form an integral part of a
broader human rights agenda for recovery.
Read more: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/coronavirus/impacts-and-responses/WCMS_739047/lang--en/index.htm
The Role of Businesses
Employers will expand their involvement in the lives
of their employees by increasing mental health support, expanding health care
coverage, and providing financial health support during and after the pandemic.
A recent Gartner survey revealed that 32% of
organizations are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers as a
cost-saving measure. Utilizing more gig workers provides employers with greater
workforce management flexibility. However, HR will also need to consider how
performance management systems apply to contingent workers as well as questions
around whether contingent workers will be eligible for the same benefits as
their full-time peers.
Leaders are redefining what critical means to include:
employees in critical strategic roles, employees with critical skills and
employees in critical workflow roles.
“Separating critical skills from
critical roles shifts the focus to coaching employees to develop skills that potentially
open multiple avenues for them, rather than focusing on preparing for a
specific next role,” said Emily Rose
McRae, director in the Gartner HR practice.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, some employees have
formed more connected relationships, while others have moved into roles that
are increasingly task-oriented.
Understanding how to engage task workers in the team
culture and creating a culture of inclusiveness is now even more important.
To deliver on employee experience, HR will need to facilitate
partnerships across the organization while working with managers to help
employees navigate the different norms and expectations associated with these
shifts.
Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, 55% of organizational
redesigns were focused on streamlining roles, supply chains, and workflows to
increase efficiency. Unfortunately, this path has created fragile systems,
prompting organizations to prioritize resilience as equally important as
efficiency.
According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report: 2018,” “By 2022, no less than 54% of all employees will
require significant re- and upskilling.” With the rapid rise of artificial
intelligence (AI) and machine learning, automation has already
impacted numerous organizations across industries, and it’s predicted to impact
more in the future.
As employees fear their job security is dwindling and
organizations fear their employees don’t have the skills needed to sustain the
business, it is imperative that more organizations take an active role in their
employees’ professional development by upskilling employees for the future of
work.
According to human resources writer Suzanne Lucas,
the cost of replacing an employee can be as high as 150% of that
person’s annual salary, hence training current employees is a cost-efficient
alternative. Josh Squires, Director of Enterprise Solutions at Docebo,
says agility is one such skill that can help employees better
navigate the future of work. “Things are changing so quickly, so rapidly that
you really have to adapt quickly, and so having that agility as a part of our
DNA and a part of your framework, from my perspective, is important,” he
shares. “You have to be willing to pivot quickly.” L&D professionals can
help set employees up for success by integrating learning agility tactics
into the onboarding process.
Providing more varied, adaptive and flexible careers
and learning plans for employees will help them gain the cross-functional
knowledge and training necessary for more flexible organizations.
The Role of Higher Education
As entire new industries are created and traditional
ones expand and contract significantly, the skills needed to keep up are
evolving at a faster rate than ever before. Educators and higher education
leaders must approach skills competency with a flexible growth mindset that
will serve students well across the global, knowledge-based economy – and
throughout their careers.
The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data, released in June 2017, correlated areas of study with incomes at one
year, three years and five years after graduation. Higher incomes are
associated with traditional subjects such as medicine and dentistry,
engineering and technology, law and banking. Universities take pride and market
their wares on the basis of the high salaries of their graduates and, while
focusing on traditional careers bolsters performance on LEO, is there a danger
of looking backwards when talking of employment? Should universities be
focusing on producing graduates for traditional jobs?
Much of the work graduates used to do is being
digitised away – that is true even in medicine and engineering, and certainly
in banking and the law. Roles for which university had been a preparation are
thinning out, and few are able to rely on having a “job for life” in a
secure profession or corporation.
There is an undeniable need to train the next
generation in emerging digital competencies and to be fluent in designing,
developing or employing technology responsibly. At the same time, 21st-century
students must learn how to approach problems from many perspectives, cultivate
and exploit creativity, engage in complex communication, and leverage critical
thinking.
With a future of work that is constantly evolving,
these non-automatable “human” skills are foundational, and will only increase
in value as automation becomes more mainstream.
Public-private partnerships focused on higher
educational attainment and workforce development are a long-term investment in
a vibrant economic future. Higher education is unique in its power to catalyse
social mobility, serving to bridge social, economic, racial, and geographic
divides like no other force. As job markets constantly evolve, it is clear that
the future demands a system of higher education that is as dynamic and
adaptable as the technologies around which our society now revolves.
Bridging the Gap
Through my work at the Hacklab Foundation, we have
been innovating on new models to bridge the gap between industry and academia,
by upskilling students before they graduate through extracurricular activities,
such as our Remote Internship Program, National Digital Skills Training
Programme in partnership with IBM.
The Hacklab
Foundation is an international
non-profit organization headquartered in Ghana with focus on preparing the
youth for future digital jobs through technology education and skills
development. We achieve this through bootcamps, hackathons, mentorship and
coaching, internships, digital skills training and job placement.
Since our inception in 2015, we have directly impacted
over 10,000 people, organized hackathons, robotics and coding bootcamps for
kids between the ages of 7yrs - 13yrs, supported 500+ women in tech, 300+ youth
were placed in jobs and 250+ youth were placed in internships. Through our
partnership with IBM, we launched the Ghana National Digital Skills Training
Program in November 2018, with a goal to reach a 100,000 people by 2021
We believe that creating an equal platform for everyone,
irrespective of race, gender, social class, and physical limitations will allow
for a fair chance to compete for the same opportunity. This has been at the
core of our initiatives.
Our role in accelerating the future of work has become
more important now more than ever as 95% of global learners are currently at
home, with a majority struggling to adapt to new ways of learning, and the less
marginalised, still facing challenges such as access to affordable internet
connectivity and even more importantly computer devices at home.
While we are still debating the subject of whether
digital education guarantees quality education, we are doing our best to reach
the masses who may have access but lack direction, to guide them to building
the right capability and connecting them to up to 300 remote internships and
jobs already negotiated for.
Preparing for the New Normal -
Are We Ready?
Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies said “Technology
now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from
almost any device. This is dramatically changing the way people work,
facilitating 24/7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time
zones, countries, and continents.”
We must embrace our new normal, ready or not! It is time to rethink
practicalizing the abstract conversations we have been having over the last 5
years regarding the Future of Work, 4th Industrial Revolution, and our new
emerging work colleagues - Robots and AI.
Time to live and walk the talk!
About the Author
Foster Awintiti Akugri is the
Founder & President of the Hacklab Foundation. He is currently the
Incubator Manager for the Stanbic Bank Incubator Ghana (SBIncubator Ghana), an
initiative of Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited, a member of the Standard Bank Group.
He was the youngest
participant at the World Economic Forum’s 48th Annual Meeting, Davos,
Switzerland in 2018. He also serves as a member of the Malaika Coalition, a
committee mandated by the Africa Regional Strategy Group of the World Economic
Forum to work on the Africa 4.0 Initiative. He also serves on the Africa Growth Platform Working
Group and was part of the team that lead the Digital Campaign Launch of the
Platform during the World Economic Forum on Africa - Cape Town in September
2019.
He was listed among 30
under 30 Future of Ghana Pioneers Class of 2019. Also named Atlantic Dialogues
Emerging Leader Class of 2019 by the Policy Center for the Global South,
Morocco. In 2019, he was also named amongst Top 100 Most Influential Young
Ghanaians and Top 4 Most Influential Young Ghanaians in Science &
Technology by Avance Media. He also received the President's Outstanding Youth
Prize in Science and Technology in 2019 by the Millennium Excellence
Foundation. In 2020, He was listed amongst Top 50 Young CEOs in Ghana by Avance
Media.
He is a public speaker
focusing on leadership, technology, entrepreneurship, smart industries,
ecosystem development, digital transformation, education, youth engagement
models and Concept of the African Dream. He is a 2x TEDx Speaker and has
delivered over 40 keynotes.
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