Future Think’s Perspectives on Digital Up-skilling

1.    Digital skills now underpin much of modern work across all industry sectors. Basic digital skills are now simply essential for everyone, young and old – essential for work and essential to function effectively in our day-to-day lives given that basic services (health, education, public services etc) have increasingly moved online. 

The long and the short is, all of us would benefit from some degree of digital up-skilling.

2.    Post COVID-19, most jobs are likely to combine remote working with physical presence.  Those with strong digital competencies are therefore more likely to succeed.

3.    Digital competency is now important for professionals across all the professions. Acquiring advanced digital skills, in particular, improves the career prospects and earning potential of all professionals.

4.    Digital skills improve the prospects of those who want the flexibility of doing freelance jobs, and open doors to those who want to compete for the growing number of jobs that can be done remotely in the global marketplace.

5.    Digital skills are critical for all entrepreneurs, especially post COVID-19 which has pushed commerce more online.

6.    The need for digital skills is set to increase. In 2019, the World Economic Forum estimated that 133 million new jobs will be created across the globe by 2022.  Most of these jobs are expected to require advanced digital skills.  Moreover, with the challenges of COVID-19, digital transformation, expected to take place over several years in some sectors, has been turbo-charged and has taken place in a matter of weeks.

7.    A significant challenge, however, is this: technical skills in the world we now live in become obsolete very quickly.  The top ten  in-demand jobs today did not exist a few years ago.  The digital and other skills in-demand today will not be in-demand in a few years hence.  So the critical need is to build human capacity today to do jobs which do not yet exist, using technologies not yet invented. Our population must be equipped to learn, unlearn and relearn new and different digital and other skills to do new and different digital and other jobs, time and time again ,throughout our working lives. 

Future Think’s Digital Up-skilling Workshops have been designed, developed and implemented over the last five years to meet this challenge head on. 

For further  background reading, please see this excellent overview by FutureLearn, a UK based provider of micro-credentials developed by world leading companies and universities. 

 The Complete Guide to Digital Skills – FutureLearn