Ever Upward: Building an Ecosystem to Support and Validate Lifelong Learning

The Changing Nature Of Work

Although many cite COVID-19 as being a pivotal turning point for industries, the economy and nature of work were undergoing significant shifts even prior to the pandemic. Technological developments like cloud computing, big data, and e-commerce along with the growth of automation and robotization and the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning were changing and will continue to change the way we live, work, and relate to one another. For Schwab (2017), it is “fusion of...technologies--and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains—that make this revolution fundamentally different from its predecessors” (p. 19). A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute argues that nearly 15% of the global workforce will be impacted by automation of routine tasks (Bughin et al., 2018). According to one popular estimate, this equates to nearly 85 million jobs that may be displaced (World Economic Forum, 2020). While the impact of such significant displacement has the potential to be staggering, it also presents an opportunity to train and educate workers and leaders in new ways, with an eye towards current and future jobs and needs of the current and emerging economy.

But it is not just the types of jobs that are changing; there are also significant changes in the way we work. Much has been said about the increase in work that is more project- and team-based. A report by the Project Management Institute suggests that the demand for project-based roles will increase from 66 million in 2017 to nearly 88 million by 2027 (Project Management Institute, 2018). And because the world is undergoing change, employers are often looking for individuals who can demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, strong interpersonal skills, and the capacity to solve complex problems in contexts that have become more uncertain, ambiguous, and wrought with new types of risk (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2013). For Schwab, the growth of computing power and robotization is creating the need for more ‘collaborative intelligence,’ where people will need to learn how to better work alongside computers and develop the skills that harness and optimize the power of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, COVID-19 has opened up opportunities for more distributed types of work and collaboration, where mobile internet technologies have enabled us to work more efficiently on global teams, creating new types of interactions that will require individuals to have high levels of social and emotional intelligence (Weise, 2020). In many ways, these changes in the economy, the shifts in jobs, and the changing nature of work are creating the need for new skills and competencies.