The arrival of the fourth industrial revolution and the accelerated development of technology are causing concern to society
The world is becoming increasingly disruptive, and especially after the 2020 pandemic, the digital adoption process has accelerated.
This digital adoption has had a major impact on the workplace as it has promoted digitization to cover the new social realities through new avenues and solutions. When uncertainty arises in society, we need to set up a working framework that benefits all parties involved: citizens, companies and administration.
We can see that throughout history the end of the work has been announced on many occasions, but what ultimately happened was that it was adapted and adapted to the social and economic realities of the moment. It is also what is happening now and what heralds important social changes.
But this is only an accelerating trend: as early as 2016, the World Economic Forum found that more than half of the people who were studying at the time would end up working in jobs that did not yet exist.
It is no surprise that the labor market has a much higher speed and capacity for change than the education market, which means that training focused on knowledge and rigid training content is lacking. Professional careers that include skills related to innovation and the ability to adapt and be able to work in digital environments will leave that obsolescence behind.
Technology will undoubtedly be an important niche for new jobs and will improve the quality of some of the existing jobs, while jobs that are dangerous or repetitive will be automated. We are moving towards a polarized model in which we will have more qualified jobs on the one hand and jobs related to service activities, with a low or medium need for qualifications, on the other.
Within the qualified positions we see, among others: information security analysts, Internet of Things (IoT) specialists or specialists in process automation. On the other hand, the jobs will be sales or content production, for example.
Technology will undoubtedly be an important niche for new jobs and will improve the quality of existing jobs.
The World Economic Forum’s 2020 report on the future of work indicates that some 85 million jobs could be replaced by machines by 2025, but that another 97 million will also arise adapted to this new machine-human configuration . So rather than setting a job cut, it seems that what can really be expected is a real transformation of the labor sector.
With the advent of machines, routine, hazardous or process acceleration tasks will be automated and, on the other hand, new jobs will be generated for its design, creation, management and supervision. Therefore, if the global trend is towards technology, it is illogical to think that computer scientists should be employed in all sectors of employment, as we are currently seeing.
Technological skills are being added to traditional professions so that they can operate in digital environments. For example, a doctor who can operate with a robot, a police officer who supervises via a drone or a neighborhood textile store that can sell online.
In 2017, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company proposed a possible scenario that would require between 75 and 375 million workers to change occupational categories by 2030. For this it is necessary to acquire a higher level of education or develop social and emotional skills of creativity, critical thinking, etc. In short, skills that are difficult to automate.
This is also reflected in other reports, such as the World Economic Forum 2020, which indicates that skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, stress tolerance, resilience and flexibility will become extremely important for companies.
These kinds of skills give workers an advantage over technology because they are necessary for job development and are fundamentally human and difficult for machines to replicate. Therefore, it is these skills that we should promote and not try to imitate or beat technology in more automatable tasks. The improvement of skills and professional recycling are becoming increasingly important and are becoming fundamental to adapt to the new labor change.
We are facing the fourth industrial revolution, which is transforming society and the global economy and is characterized by more affordable and smaller technology, a ubiquitous internet, artificial intelligence and machine learning. But this complex, disruptive and eminently technological scenario requires and will require new jobs. Some already exist (artificial intelligence specialists, developers of e-commerce platforms), others are hardly imaginable without a prospective study.
The distribution of these technological processes will not be homogeneous, either by sector or geographically, and therefore also by jobs. Rather than robots replacing humans, it seems that the trend will be for humans to work with robots. In other words, we are going to change the way we work.
This idea includes our way of dealing with work and our consideration of it. Other global trends, not necessarily technological, include project work, result orientation and environmental awareness.
Employees are people and they suffer from human problems such as burnout or job frustration. This can lead to a tendency to quit jobs, even in times of uncertainty.
The one trend that seems constant in a changing work scenario is its clear link to what it feeds on: people.
Consequently, looking at our job projection individually, taking into account the technological and social megatrends, will put us in a better position in the future labor market. Entrepreneurs and HR managers, in turn, should take these megatrends into account when managing their teams, assuming that they are, above all, people.
This article published in ‘The Conversation’ was originally published in Fundación Telefónica’s magazine Telos.
Source: La Verdad
I am Mary Fitzgerald, a professional journalist and author of the Today Times Live. My specialty is in writing and reporting on technology-related topics. I have spent the last seven years extensively researching and understanding the field of technology so I can properly inform my readers about developments in this ever-evolving world.
