The unprecedented speed of change

 We're living in an era of unprecedented change for business.

 One-time reskilling and upskilling efforts will not be sufficient to deal with transformations in the long term. Companies and their ecosystems need to build a culture of lifelong learning which allows employees to continuously improve their competencies. – World Economic Forum

How can the workforce survive? The answer- get the right skills and pursue lifelong upskilling.

Are you communicating to your alumni the significance of that message? Do you share it with those who seek you out? Do you shout it from the mountaintop through regular alumni communication? Are you helping them to understand the importance of continuous learning before it’s too late?

Higher Ed at the World Economic Forum

At the 2020 World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, one session focused on 4 key points:

• Automation and the gig economy are radically changing how we work

• How we learn must keep pace with these new technologies

• We need learning to be cross-disciplinary, personalized, and focused on human skills

• Together, government and the private sector can future-fit education

Many of the jobs that will exist when students graduate don’t exist today, and as the years past we will see more of our jobs being automated. How can higher education prepare people for success? Let’s focus on 2 of the solutions this session posed.

1) Focus on “human” skills, not just digital competencies

While it is undeniably important to be teaching how to design, develop or employ technology, higher ed is already good at teaching technical skills. It’s the non-automatable “human” skills (sometimes called “soft skills”, though we prefer “core” or “foundational” skills), that will continue to increase in value. And those are the skills that higher ed is generally not adept at teaching. You can’t learn them by watching videos or e-learning. You can only learn these skills of the future by DOING them. Are you helping to facilitate that?

2) Invest in personalized, technology-enhanced learning

“Technology-enhanced learning can help us keep up with demand and offer pathways for the existing workforce to gain new skills.” Unless you’re a full-time student, there is typically little time to spend trying to improve in all the new core skills. Rather, people should focus on areas where they have a gap, and focus on developing those skills, one at a time, one activity at a time, so that it’s a manageable effort. Better yet, find learning activities that can be done in the flow of work.

Need help offering alumni the right personalized learning recommendations and facilitating a manageable journey to upskilling? More importantly, raising their awareness of which gaps they have so they are motivated to take action? Contact us to learn how we can help