Automation is growing at pace in the workplace, and with it concerns that some employees will soon be out of a job if they fail to re-train themselves for the new roles that smarter industries will require.
But according to a new report from Microsoft, in collaboration with Goldsmiths, University of London, maybe you needn't worry so much: almost three-quarters of UK workers already possess the right combination of skills to thrive in the digital economy.
The report's conclusions stand out in stark contrast to recent warnings that the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the replacement of some jobs with new technologies. The World Economic Forum (WEF), for example, estimates that the next five years will see 85 million jobs displaced by automation[1].
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While the WEF also predicted that 97 million new roles will be created in the same amount of time, the organization warned that access to these "jobs of the future" will highly depend on governments and businesses' willingness to retrain the workforce with the skills required to work in fields such as data, AI or cloud computing.
"There has been a lot of discussion about the need to retrain the workforce," Chris Brauer, director of innovation at Goldsmiths University, who co-authored the report in collaboration with Microsoft, tells ZDNet. "But we found there is an enormous potential that is yet untapped in the marketplace."
This "untapped potential" is referred to as the "next-gen worker" in the report. They possess two sets of skills: they are digital-savvy, and can easily use new technologies; but, with some help from tools such as low-code or no-code platforms, they also have the ability to create new systems for others to use.
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