How to future-proof your job against IT revolution

Before alarm clocks existed, workers would be woken up by a person known as a knocker-up, who would tap on the window with a truncheon — and unlike today’s snooze button, he wouldn’t leave until you got up.

Technology has given birth to new career paths, but some jobs have disappeared as machines do them faster. A study by Oxford academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne claims that computerisation puts nearly half of jobs into the high-risk category, which means they could be redundant within 10 to 20 years.

If so many occupations are destined for the chop, is there any way to make sure you don’t become surplus to requirement?

“The jobs that seem to be at high risk are those intermediary roles, a lot of office and administration work, and sales work,” says Richard Newton, author of The End Of Nice: How to be Human in a World Run by Robots.

“It is not impossible to imagine that in the future your phone might detect in your voice that you have Parkinson’s and set up an appointment with your doctor to talk about it. That’s cutting out a lot of jobs and time.”

The rise of robots is far from science fiction. Amazon is already putting robots to work in its warehouses, and plans to use drones to deliver products to customers in 30 minutes or less. Innovations in self-driving cars are set to transform travel and transportation, while automation is transforming agriculture, retail and the financial services, and looks set to do the same for law and medicine.

Being human

Is there any area where humans can realistically outperform machines? Yes, says Newton — people will be hired for things robots can’t do. Take journalism. Some news writing has already been automated, but as journalism is not a pure transmission of information, it isn’t a natural field for a robot to excel.

Newton says: “To understand what stories might be interesting to the readers, that’s a very human skill. There we are dealing with interpersonal communication, empathy, compassion.”

These profoundly human skills, along with others such as creativity, problem solving and caring, are the ones people will get hired for in the future, he says.

 

So what can you do if you are worried about the long-term potential of your chosen career? One option is to look at the skills shortages where you live and invest in the relevant training, says Barinder Hothi, co-founder of global education provider The Knowledge Academy.

In the UK, for instance, the IT sector is a massive growth area. It is predicted there will be 750,000 computer science jobs to fill by 2017, but just 50,000 computer science students graduated in 2014.

“IT is the biggest driver for innovation. We need to have a sufficiently skilled labour force, and that’s not the case today in many countries.”

Advances in IT will continue to lead to the automation of tasks, and when this happens employees need to be able to adapt to change.

“Some individuals will do that better than others. We are seeing a lot of people investing in their own education. Gone are the days when people are doing training for the sake of training,” Hothi says.

The good news is that for some of us, future proofing our careers may be easier than expected. In fact, many of us have grown up with skills that are invaluable in the workplace.

Julie Bishop, founder of Jobhop, an online platform that connects employers with jobseekers, points out that many young people are naturally immersed in social media, and the art of online communication is getting more important for businesses.

Employers need to learn from digital savvy people who are quick to pick up on new trends. Bishop says she promotes the agile employee – someone who adapts quickly to change and is task-led rather than confined to the narrow remit of their job role.

However, schools are doing little to prepare young people for the world of work if they ignore technology. A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), claims schools have yet to take advantage of the potential of technology in the classroom to give every student the skills they need in today’s connected world.

Embracing technology is likely to be the best way to survive the changing face of jobs.