In industry today, manual processing – for the most part – is gone. Whereas in decades gone by, people would be stationed along a conveyer belt – in say, a toothpaste factory – and assemble the toothpaste tube, now, machines do all of this for us. These machines are also able to perform this assembly quicker than people can.
And it’s not just manufacturing jobs which have been affected by Industry 4.0. According to the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA), other jobs which are at risk of becoming obsolete and automated are, among others:
- Telemarketers
- Library technicians
- Credit analysts
- Mathematical technicians
- Office administrators
This means that, as so many people’s jobs are at risk of being automated, these individuals need to reskill themselves to be able to respond well to the changing needs of the world today and the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is characterising daily living.
Here are some of the skills that employees will need to develop to remain relevant in the job market in the following decade and beyond.
Cognitive flexibility
The term ‘cognitive flexibility’ refers to an individual’s ability to switch seamlessly between thinking about two different concepts or to think about these two different concepts at the same time. Children who are growing up today (in other words, digital natives) are developing this ability from early on as they are, for example, able to play a game and watch a series on the same iPad screen. Thus, to remain relevant in this digital age, non-digital natives will have to develop this same ability.
If you’re a parent and are raising digital natives, Arthur Goldstuck and Nikki Bush’s author-led course – Tech Savvy Parenting – shows you how you can raise your children in harmony with technology. For more information about this incredibly insightful course, please follow this link.
Digital literacy
Together with cognitive flexibility comes digital literacy. What we mean by this is that people will need to be taught how to work the different technologies that are sprouting left, right and centre to benefit their careers.
Judgement and decision-making
The word is continuously producing new technologies, most of which little-to-nothing is known about. This means that people will need to carefully examine these new advances and make critical decisions regarding whether or not they would be useful in their companies.
Just keep in mind that sometimes, you won’t get this judgement right, so you need to be prepared to go at it, again and again, until you find the right fit for your business. Nicholas Haralambous – in his author-led course Do. Fail. Learn. Repeat – teaches students how to develop the resilience to keep on going with business when there seems to be no hope. Find out more here.
Creativity
In the next decade, more and more, we’ll be seeing the need for people to develop creative solutions to navigate the world well. The ‘old-way-of-doing-things’ has been thrown out of the window. It’s now time to reinvent the status quo and make it your own.
In the Flip The Funnel author-led course, Joseph Jaffe teaches students about new and innovative ways of marketing their businesses so that it is possible to get in front of the people who matter – your customers and potential customers. For more information about Joseph’s course, please follow this link.
Contact Future Self Academy
If you want to improve your outlook on life and improve your relationship with money, yourself and business, then you need to have a look at our course catalogue and see what courses would suit you. You’re not just getting reading material. You’re also getting away to internalise the content and remember it so that you can apply it better in your life going forward.
To view our catalogue of courses, please follow this link.
