Working in the technology industry means change is always your friend. If you don’t like change, this industry will devour you. When I meet colleagues who run businesses in “traditional” industries (say construction, finance or transportation), I am always struck at how much of what they do is pretty well the same as they have been doing for the past 20, 30 or even 40 years. Sure, the “how” is evolving, but the “what” is fairly steady. For most technology companies, I suspect that 80 per cent of what clients pay for today is completely different than what they paid for just three years ago. That is a little scary. But it is even more exhilarating.
Regardless of industry, the pace of change has profound implications for our workforce and how precariously workers cling to their relevance in the job market. Today, 50 per cent of the skills people use to do their jobs change every three years. Wow!
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At this moment, human knowledge is doubling every 13 months – by 2020 it will be doubling every 72 days. Small businesses, their employees and many displaced workers are feeling the pain. In fact, a recent study found that businesses under 100 employees are 28 per cent less productive than businesses over 100 employees. The pace of change in today’s workplace necessitates a diversified approach to workforce learning—an approach which leverages technology. Sadly, small businesses, low wage workers and millions of job seekers do not have the same access to on-demand, online lifelong skill development as their colleagues in large firms. The research in this area is compelling – online learning is critical for small business (and their current and future employees) to maintain their relevance, employability and productivity. That is perhaps why by 2019, 50 per cent of all courses completed in the world will be taken online.
Unfortunately, the marketplace has not provided incentive for the e-learning industry to address the needs of the groups that have been left behind. As a result we now have a widening Digital Learning Divide between large firms and their employees and those who work for smaller firms or are actively looking for work. Even more unfortunately, our systems to deal with this (workforce development, post-secondary programs, etc.) are simply unable to keep pace. That fact has, in many ways, underpinned part of the skills gap debates which occasionally flare up and ensnare our politicians and the media. Over the next year, I hope to use this blog to look at the technology, barriers and systems that touch at the very heart of our economy – the capacity of workers to keep pace in the face of unprecedented changes in the economy. The people that succeed are the ones who consciously or unconsciously understand their relevance in the workforce is fleeting. Today, relevance is a lifelong journey – not a destination.
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