The future of work is a topic that I’ve written about extensively over the years, and it’s quite clear that we’re ill-positioned to support people in making the changes they will need. The education system is ill-equipped to provide the lifelong learning people will require as they navigate through multiple careers. The workplace is ill-equipped to deliver continuous training and mobility for people. The welfare system is ill-equipped to help people transition from career to career.
In her latest book, Long Life Learning, Michelle Weiss outlines five elements that she believes will be crucial in the future of work. Five guiding principles if you like.
5 Guiding Principles For The Future Of Work
- Things must be navigable – It’s vital that people are able to gain a “birds-eye” perspective on the job market so that they’re aware of the career pathways available to them. This also includes systems that can help people to make sense of the skills they already have and how transferrable they might be to new jobs.
- Things must be supportive – Learning new skills can be daunting, especially when under intense financial pressure or with considerable caring responsibilities (or often both). As such, it’s vital that “wraparound services” are provided to help people with these things and allow them to learn the skills they will need to thrive.
- Things must be targeted – It sounds obvious, but any interventions need to provide the right skills, the right pathways, at the right time, yet previous initiatives to support lifelong learning have suffered from a one-size-fits-all approach that didn’t really help anyone.
- Things must be integrated – For reskilling and lifelong learning to work it has to be possible to integrate them with the lives and responsibilities people will inevitably have. This will require a degree of flexibility that education hasn’t always delivered.
- Things must be transparent – Too often hiring is an opaque process that doesn’t allow job seekers to truly prove the skills and capabilities they possess. This is to the detriment of employers as they limit the pool of talent they can fish from.
“The connective tissue that unites these five guiding principles is a more robust data infrastructure,” Weiss explains. “Data sharing is key to strengthening connections between learners, employers, learning providers, funders, and policymakers in any given community.”
Obviously what we have now is a long way from what Weiss proposes, but the five principles are a nice framework through which we can direct our efforts to try and ensure that the future of work is one that benefits all of society.
