Never in the history of global innovation has society witnessed such accelerated modernization and transformative change as we have realized in the past two decades. These changes are impacting every area of our lives, chiefly through ongoing digitalization, and happening across all consumer and business products.
The attributes of this modernization come in the form of continuous upgrades, enhancements and, in many cases, brand-new product features. However, much less perceptible is the equally transformative impact these remarkable innovations are having on workforce development via the rapidly widening digital divide. This divide is no longer being defined as society having the tools needed to access the online economy, but, rather, as society having the requisite digital skills and experiences required to successfully access the growing career pathways resident in the future of work.
The ubiquity of these changes makes the impact of this rapid innovation inescapable. They are innovations being delivered with the stealth of a thief in the night. However, unlike a thief in the night, the focus of these silent and seamless upgrades is to deliver new functionality or continuous product improvement — often both. This progress provides each of us with increases in value, with a well-anticipated and regular cadence of upgrades.
Further illustrating this growing ecosystem of transformative change are annual product releases. These releases — characterized by their flashy showmanship— are often accompanied by new and cutting-edge capabilities. Many of these capabilities we did not even know we needed, even as we race to adopt and leverage them. However, in all cases, these services are focused on further improving productivity, entertainment and quality of life.
However, unlike new product features that come with exhaustive service terms, changes to underlying skills requirements and workforce impacts are much less tracked or announced. While there isn’t a skills rubric to accompany these enhancements, each of these micro- and macro-innovations present real impacts to legacy practices, processes and skill requirements. As a result, our ability to prepare the workforce for this resulting skill transformation needs to become an increasingly important cross-sector priority. This urgency is not philanthropic but born out of the need to further reinforce the cultural imperative of life-long learning and educational equity, which are critical to the vibrancy and global competitiveness of our workforce, our companies, and our economy.
Age of acceleration
Due to the unprecedented velocity of this change, unlike other economic revolutions before it, even more intentional retooling of workforce development is required. This is in large part due to the scale, scope and speed of this post-industrial evolution. An economic cycle best marked by the convergence of new pioneering technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation and the Internet of things. These capabilities are being integrated into every aspect of our economy simultaneously. The rapid rate at which businesses and consumers adopt these capabilities and new practices further accelerates our changing environment. Consumer and business adoption reflects the added value being delivered by these emergent innovations.
Simultaneously happening, but with less perceptibility than new product and service enhancements, are changes to the business processes, workflows and skills occurring across the global economy. The workforce development consequences of this rapid modernization do not show up with the same glitter as a new product introduction. New skills requirements and changes to workforce competencies are not illustrated with the same specificity as expansive new service agreements. Notwithstanding this lack of skill disclosure, the downstream impacts are equally pervasive.
The implications of the rapidly modernizing skills and practices to meet changing business requirements is a critical factor for the workforce. Therefore, equally transformative considerations to our professional development processes are urgently needed to meet this moment. This urgency is needed to further optimize these new innovations while fostering the workforce vitality to create the next generation of innovation — which if not actively addressed can lead to a loss of competitive advantage.
So, preparing our workforce for a future of work that requires the continued maturation of technical skills and new business processes is a leadership imperative. It is also a recognition that our post-industrial economy is being radically and forever altered in favor of companies that can best integrate a career-connected work-based learning model into their operational talent processes.
Evolution of talent development
Amid these transformations to our economy and the societal response to them, we can glean lessons from prior economic evolutions.
For example: the agricultural revolution. This global transformation gave rise to unprecedented productivity and increases in farm production. As published in “The Innovation Revolution in Agriculture,” it took nearly two centuries to widely diffuse both the skills and practices of these more modern agrarian farming procedures. However, once diffused, it was this modernization in labor productivity and agricultural outcomes that served as the catalyst for population migration to the cities. This economic shift permitted the next wave of innovative economic transformation. Notwithstanding, what we are witnessing today is not a span of two centuries to widely diffuse skills and practices but in many cases days.
Similarly, the Industrial Revolution spawned large-scale industrialization and mass production, also unlocking significant economic productivity. This transition from creating goods by hand to using machines required an intentional reskilling of the workforce then accustomed to chiefly agrarian practices. According to National Geographic’s “Industrialization, Labor and Life,” the diffusion of modern skills and practices took a century to be widely adopted and deployed.
Although skill diffusion occurred during the Industrial Revolution materially quicker than that observed during the Agricultural Revolution, both transformations required material changes to workforce development. The human capital development essential to optimizing global economic output introduced structural changes that were recognized by both business and government.
The economic benefit of having a more skilled and modern workforce were clear, and drove cross-sector recognition and action. In a rapidly industrializing America, this public-private collaboration provided a competitive advantage that our industries still enjoy today.
Post-secondary education shifts
Further necessitating the urgency to retool workforce development models are the real and pervasive shifts happening across post-secondary education in the U.S.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics, while the U.S. population has increased from 309.3 million in 2010 to 333.2 million in 2022, college enrollment dropped 10 percent. This decline is even more pronounced in two-year associate programs, where enrollment rates have declined by 36.1 percent. And, despite this decline in college student enrollment, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, 45 million Americans owe an average of $37,000 in student debt.
Equally concerning is that student loan balances increased to $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Further complicating this situation is that many students emerging from institutions of higher education often lack the workforce experiences and relevant skills required to perform effectively in the context of technologies and digital processes firmly embedded within our global companies.
Unfortunately, the forces fueling the acceleration of innovative transformation show no signs of slowing down. Conversely, they are more likely to increase in both the speed and amount of change. The foundation for this acceleration is clear: Elements like Moore’s Law state that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years while the cost of computing power decreases by half. However, modern manufacturing techniques have been making this technological observation a reality for years, producing smaller microchips with greater processing power.
One catalyst of this need for increased processing power is the fact that, according to the Statical Data Compass, it is estimated that 90 percent of the world’s data was generated in the last two years. 120 zettabytes of that data is estimated to be generated in 2023, which is expected to increase by over 150 percent by 2025. For reference, a zettabyte is expressed as two to the 70th power, or one sextillion bytes. Equivalent to the amount of data held on 660 billion Blu-Ray discs — if we can even recall what a Blu-Ray disc is in our new era of streaming services.
These new realities further evidence the acute prioritization of the intentional modernization of our human capital development models. An inability to grapple with this new reality from a workforce development perspective will have disastrous consequences. According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, while innovative technologies are likely to replace 85 million jobs, they are also likely to create 97 million new jobs.
According to McKinsey & Company’s 2023 research report, “What Is the Future of Work,” job growth “will be more concentrated in high-skill jobs.” These workforce shifts are currently observable via the measurable higher demand in employment, in health care, technology, engineering and math fields. This is occurring while middle and low-skilled jobs are being replaced by automation. As airlines, grocery stores, fast food chains and many other retail outlets install increasingly smarter and more functional self-service kiosks, the demand for lower-skilled workers will continue to decline.
Similarly, as robotic process automation is further integrated into manufacturing processes, there will be less demand for manufacturing workers as well. Also, white-collar workers are no longer immune from these shifts in innovation. Generative AI and other adjacent machine-learning processes have already made their way into our office suites. These new properties are materially increasing the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of white-collar workers. This resulting productivity increase, resulting in reducing the number of white-collar workers required for legacy processes, further giving rise to new and different skill demands. As these Generative AI capabilities mature, the impact to all employees globally will never look the same.
Meeting the moment
Given these observations it is accurate to state that the future of work is not coming; it is here. Encouragingly what is also here is a proven framework for further augmenting workforce development. A framework that requires us to look both forward and backward for what works. Specifically, the material expansion of career-connected work-based learning in a manner that ladders it directly into these emerging in-demand commercial sectors.
This talent development framework is not new or novel, but it is effective. It aligns directly with the long and successful, global history of skill development enabled via established apprenticeship programs; a model that provides labor market entrants with an earn-while-you-learn approach that connects their formal learning with practical on-the-job work experiences. It also fosters an environment that builds a social network plus soft and hard skill development across in-demand areas. Equally important, it advances the important paradigm of lifelong learning required for employees and businesses alike.
Perhaps most importantly, the model is tried and true. It has helped support the past diffusion of technical and strategic skills. Proving it is a model that can do the same for the next century. As stated in Thomas Piketty’s bestselling book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” “over 300 years of economic history, the principal and most enduring mechanism for distribution of wealth and reduction in inequality is the diffusion of skills and knowledge.”
Apprenticeships present a workforce development solution that is uniquely human and employee-centered. An apprenticeship model could more efficiently meet the cross-sector needs of employees, educational institutions and employers alike; a solution creating workforce capabilities more responsively to the changing skill demands of the evolving labor market. Luckily, the internal corporate pipeline for these processes exists today, as we reflect on the multi-year analyst and associate programs that exist across many companies. These programs each have direct roots and parallels to career-connected, work-based learning.
Furthermore, this orientation has value well beyond the entry labor pool. It can deliver equal transformative developmental value to reskill employees whose jobs are being disrupted by the ongoing expansion of innovative technologies. Also, like corporate analyst and associate programs, there are varying design patterns that can fit any industry or enterprise.
However, central to each design pattern is the need to place commercial outcomes and clear employee career pathways as a central objective, as well as, the need to establish durable cross-sector engagements with our educational suppliers of talent. This ability to build a more effective public-private partnership with a shared vision of the changing skill environment can unlock transformational value for the enterprise, for our employees and for the communities where we live and work.
If knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower. Career-connected work-based learning can deliver the required workforce development capabilities to meet the moment while creating a more innovative and inclusive economy.
