Talent and the Future of Work

According to the World Economic Forum (link above), these five trends are enduring:

-       Companies restructure and transformation for efficiency

-       Hiring for skills backed with experience instead of potential

-       Talent mobility across jobs, industries and geographies

-       Decline of employment and rise of “work” in other forms

-       Importance of digital skills

It is worrying to see these trends together showing companies competing on talent based on immediate and short-term needs, instead of investing in longer term strategies to build future talent and encourage talent growth and job market stability. While these trends are manifested today in what is perceived to be a stronger position of workers on the job market, they also have critical implications that would be felt sooner than later. First, this “strong” position of workers is limited to a minority of workers with the currently desired skills and experience. Second, as clearly mentioned, employment is on the decline and the “new work” is barely ever regulated. This leaves workers in general and as a collective in a much more vulnerable position and not a stronger one. Especially on the mid and long-term.

Most and foremost, these trends do not offer a sustainable solution for talent gaps, digital illiteracy, workplace inequalities and insecurities. As a matter of fact, these trends show companies as a cause of the problem and not part of the solution. While there are exceptions, where companies pioneer activities to transform their workforce, those remain only exception.

So let’s quickly examine each of these trends:

-       Transformation mentioned here does not focus on workers, rather on efficiency of the company (being mergers, splitting, acquisition).

-       Hiring for skills and experience is leaving behind the vast majority of the future workforce who are just entering the job market. In addition, framing this as a problem for the education system to solve demonstrates an irresponsible attitude, where companies expect to receive ready to work graduates in a business environment that is changing very rapidly and companies themselves are having troubles catching up with. 

-       The talent mobility and the decline of employment are nothing more than a reaction to the current job market and skills scarcity. And those are led by individual workers to fill the current gaps. To note that these changes are sometimes driven by need of the workers and not desire.

-       Digital skills are of course important. Equally important is to acknowledge that these skills change very rapidly and are best learned while working.

In summary, when companies do not engage in building future talent, other actors would do that. Most notably, the workers themselves, because they cannot wait. By then, it is too late for companies to catch up and meet expectations. That's exactly what we are witnessing today. As mentioned, there are companies out there seriously engaged in transforming their workforce (be it directly or indirectly employed), offering training, opportunities, tailored career plans with growth objectives. These are the companies that are less loud today about the talent scarcity. They hire for potentials and build their talent for the future. We need more of those engaged solution-oriented companies to build a future of work that leaves no one behind.