MAY-JUNE 2017HR TECH OUTLOOK8Creating the Future Workforce, TodayEllyn Shook, Chief Leadership & Human Resources Officer, AccentureWe are living in a time of unprecedented, high velocity change. Headlines abound about machines taking over our jobs, jobs without workers--particularly in IT--and workers without jobs. This digital revolution will create winners and losers among both organizations and individuals. Leaders need to leverage every advantage at their disposal to rise to the challenge. In an era that heralds technology as the silver bullet, leaders must not overlook their most important source of competitive differentiation--their people.If this sounds like an HR issue, think again. Solving the skills shortage and transforming the workforce for the digital age is the responsibility of every C-suite leader--because of the complexity and urgency of both the challenge and the opportunity. But how?In our recent study, Harnessing Revolution: Creating the Future Workforce, a picture emerged of three key actions that leaders can take to proactively shape and prepare the future workforce:1. Accelerate reskilling people2. Redesign work to unlock human potential3. Strengthen the talent pipeline from its sourceBuilding Skills ­ Better and FasterOne of the most important actions organizations can take is to rapidly reskill their people. Our analysis shows if we double the pace at which people learn new skills, the risk of job loss due to automation can be reduced significantly--from 10 to 4 percent in the US, 9to 6 percent in the UK, and 15 to 10 percent in Germany.And people are ready to learn new skills. Our survey of 10,000 workers around the world showed that they are not only optimistic about the impact of technology on their jobs--84 percent saying it will improve their job experience--but they understand the importance of remaining relevant. Eighty-five percent indicated they would invest their free time to learn new skills. At Accenture, we faced our own reskilling challenge and upskilled over 70,000 people in new IT skills like Agile, DevOps, Cloud and Mobility in one year. And it was not just about training--we created boot camp experiences, field work, job shadowing and on-demand digital learning boards to accelerate job readiness in a relatively short amount of time. Other companies are blurring the lines between learning and working with intelligent technology. In our work with Shell, we collaborated with UpSkill on intelligent wearable technology for roles ranging from field technicians to lab scientists. The latest phase of work focused on new ways to collaborate, connecting the "what I see" perspective of the hands-on worker to the knowledge worker in the lab, enabling real-time information sharing on critical tasks. While reskilling is an immediate action, it is ultimately about creating a more relevant life script for the digital age. Gone are the days when you went to school IN MY OPINIONByEllyn Shook
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