Training leaders for the new future

For generations, we have spent the first third of our lives acquiring the college degrees we need to find jobs. These degrees are the stamps on our professional passports that paved the way for the remaining two-thirds of our journey. This implies that the nature of our work, along with the skills and knowledge required to execute it, remains unchanged for a lifetime – which of course is no longer true. While our parents likely held one job for life, most of us have had several – and not just jobs but careers, too. Our children can expect to have many jobs and careers through their professional lives – perhaps even at the same time, with the maturing of the gig economy.

Clearly, the future of work will not be about college degrees; it will be about job skills. Now is our opportunity to steer those without college degrees toward successful careers and increase diversity amongst our workforce.

According to the World Economic Forum, more than 1 billion jobs, almost one-third of all jobs worldwide, are likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade. We are already seeing this happen. Think of the service staff at your favorite restaurant taking your order on a tablet that is connected to a central order-processing system back in the kitchen. The tablet must work without glitches to keep the restaurant running smoothly. Think of the apps you use to shop, track orders and simply stay informed. The store needs to keep them up and running at all hours, day after day, all year round. And because every one of these stores collects and maintains customer data that they study for trends – they need data analysts. They must also secure this data, which means they must therefore run cybersecurity operations.

In these and other similar situations, people are the organizing force making sure technology works the way we want it to. This means an unprecedented and rapid rise in new kinds of digital jobs. According to the Forum’s Jobs of Tomorrow report, there will be a rapid influx of roles at the forefront of the data and AI economy, as well as new roles in engineering, cloud computing and product development. These jobs need talent with relevant skills, and importantly these skills can be learnt even by those without college degrees.

The COVID-19 downturn gives us ample reason to act at scale, and act now. While the outbreak has been unsparing in its impact, we’ve seen a correlation between jobless rates and education level. For example, in the US, the decrease in employment from February to May ranged from 6% among workers with a bachelor’s degree or above to 21% among workers without a high school diploma (see figure below). Workers with a college degree or higher education are also much more likely to have the option to telework compared with high school graduates who did not go to college.