Kathy Gibson is at the Wits University Origins Centre – Globalisation, inter-organisational alliances and the exponential development of ICT are all conspiring to drive change in the workplace.
Becky Mosehle, chief HR officer at Liquid Telecom, points out that in the digital economy, we are seeing a move to geographical dispersion of work, where customers, suppliers, employees and stakeholder are located in different geographic locations.
That this means for work is that the role of leadership is changing to become distributed, shared and hyper-linked, Mosehle says.
The changing nature of work and the move to flexible work will be the biggest challenge for employee skills over the next few years – and much of the effect of this has already been felt.
“We now talk about crowdsourcing where you no longer have to have a fixed employee,” Mosehle says. “We talk about the gig economy where people don’t have one employer, but have many.”
The growth of the middle class in emerging markets is another big change.
Climate change and effect of natural resources are big drivers. In terms of technology, the rise of the Internet of Things, robotics, autonomous transport and artificial intelligence are all driving the change in work as well.
Not so prominent now, but set to become more prevalent soon, are advanced manufacturing, 3D printing and biotechnology.
“Gone are the days when techies can just sit behind a computer,” Mosehle adds. “We are seeing a growth of soft skills.
“This is because of the amount of collaboration that is required, and the ability to articulate while driving the direction of the organisation.”
Other skills that are becoming key include cognitive abilities, systems skills, complex problem solving, content skills, process skills, social skills, resource management skills, technical skills and physical abilities.
“A lot of these skills were not important 20 years ago,” says Mosehle. “But there is no doubt that skilled people today require soft skills as well.”
STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning is well-recognised as important for students aiming to enter the ICT and technology sector.
But Mosehle points out that we should now look at STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) as the new imperative.
“Data science and analytics jobs are all going to require more soft skills,” she adds.”
At Liquid Telecoms, employees believe the skills that will be important in future are cloud architecture, software-defined networking, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data/analytics.
“We have had to bring in skills,” says Masehle. “And we’ve had to ensure we transfer skills to employees.
“We talk about life-long learning, which is moving away from just classroom learning to on-the-job training as well.”
There are implications of the changing workforce for individuals as well as organisations,
Individuals need to embrace lifetime learning, shape their own career paths, and pursue their passions, Mosehle points out.
Organisations need to redesign work for technology and learning; source and integrate talent across networking; implement new models of organisation structures, leadership, culture and rewards.
“In Africa, we can consider the situation as bloom or gloom,” Mosehle says.
The continent faces many challenges: communities are not equipped with basic digital literacy, poverty; lack of resource in education; lack of access to digital technologies; and lack of connectivity.
However, Mosehle believes Africa is tackling the challenges and that people can take advantage of the situation to make themselves more employable, Masehle says.
“We believe Africa is looking at this as a bloom rather than gloom.”
By 2025, Africa will graduate from having the youngest population in the world to having the largest workforce, with 10-million to 15-million graduates entering the workforce every year.
Government and corporates are beginning to understand the impact of the digital revolution and are contributing to skills development.
In fact, South Africa ranks among the top 10 countries leading the digital transformation change required to compete in the 21stcentury economies.
African government’s policies include an investment in education and training on digital skills; building of improving infrastructure; providing learners with personal skills and tablets; investment in promoting start-ups and SMEs and more.
Women are also coming to the fore in the digital revolution, with the technology sector offer great career prospects for women.
Liquid Telecoms is driving forward with its “Cape to Cairo” connectivity project, which it believes will help to deliver pan-African prosperity through technology.
The company has also launched the 21CSkills platform that is available free to all interested in developing digital skills in Africa.
It is being used to train data science students, offering a wide range of support structures in conjunction with the online course.