If you don’t use technology to innovate, will you become obsolete?

Adapting workforces

Businesses are investing in digital: in fact, our Europe Attractiveness Survey 2018 revealed that digital and business services accounted for 31% of all foreign direct investment projects in Europe in 2017. The reality, however, is that every business will soon be a technology business. So business leaders need to consider how they can help their existing workforces adapt to change and embrace new skills. Also, how can they enable their organizations to better compete in a marketplace where digital expertise is fought over? 

As highly-skilled workers seek out more portfolio careers rather than traditional long-term roles at employers, it’s important to adapt to the so called gig-workforce. Two years ago, we introduced GigNow, a global talent marketplace that helps specialist workers build out experiences or gain the flexibility they need. We’re now offering this in 10 countries and are able to bring critical skills like digital, cyber, robotics and blockchain to our teams and clients. It’s also important for businesses to tap into the ecosystems – it’s no longer about doing it all yourself. We work with firms like SAP and Microsoft to help businesses best tap into industry-leading technologies – like Industrial IoT to blockchain and cloud storage.

Policies and the education system must keep up

Countries have a duty to their citizens to provide an education system that equips school leavers and university graduates with the skills needed by businesses and society. Even more importantly, they need to have policies that support people in the existing workforce to not only survive – but thrive – in the Transformative Age. These policies should be sensitive to ageing demographics and proactively include groups that have previously suffered some exclusion from the workplace as a result of structural bias – women being the most prominent example. 

I believe that businesses, governments and educational institutions must work together to deliver tomorrow’s talent and to ensure that Industry 4.0 does not reinforce and exacerbate today’s social inequalities. Through collaboration, we can drive investment and job creation that drives inclusive growth. Attracting and developing digital skills, and having the right soft skills to harness the power of technology and drive innovation, must be core to organizational strategy. 

The reskilling and upskilling of Europe’s workforce is not going to happen by accident. It requires deliberate planning, with a longer-term view. By understanding their capability needs, businesses can embed the right learning, tools and apprenticeships to secure their future talent supply. They can also recruit for capabilities, rather than roles, and aim to develop their people to meet their talent needs. Simultaneously, governments can provide the right regulatory context and facilitate skill-building on a larger scale more consistently across borders. As well as policies, they can offer support for SMEs (small- to medium-sized enterprises) that often lack the resources to invest in skills development themselves.

In this competitive, fast-moving Transformative Age, businesses cannot risk becoming obsolete. Talent is the key that will allow them to unlock their digital growth potential. If they are to succeed, however, they need to take an inclusive view on what talent means, implement comprehensive people strategies and commit to investing in the training and development of existing staff alongside the recruitment of new employees. Transformation is happening. Let’s make it a force for good.