CEOs Must Start a Skills Revolution to Unlock the Potential of the Digital Age, According to New Research from Accenture Stra...
January 16 2017 - 6:01PM
Business Wire
Reskilling People to be Adaptive and Relevant
Will Create the Future Workforce
A new report by Accenture Strategy (NYSE:ACN) cautions that in a
rapidly changing digital landscape, CEOs must lead the charge in
reskilling their people to be relevant in the future and ready to
adapt to change. According to the report, Harnessing: Revolution:
Creating the Future Workforce, CEOs must be mindful to put their
people first and at the center of change to create the future
workforce.
The stakes are high for businesses, workers and society as a
whole. Development of human skills such as leadership, critical
thinking and creative skills, as well as emotional intelligence,
would reduce job losses due to total automation considerably. The
survey of 10,527 working people in ten countries and Accenture
Strategy modeling shows that if the rate at which workers build
relevant skills is doubled, the share of jobs at risk of total
automation in the U.S. in 2025 would be reduced from 10 percent to
four percent. The same progress in the U.K. and Germany would
result in reductions from nine to six percent and 15 to 10 percent
respectively.
“Paradoxically, the truly human skills, from leadership to
creativity, will remain highly relevant and winning organizations
will strike the right balance – leveraging the best of technology
to elevate, not eliminate their people,” said Ellyn Shook, Chief
Leadership and Human Resources Officer, Accenture. “Not only are
workers optimistic, but they understand they must learn new skills.
Digital can accelerate learning by embedding training seamlessly
into daily work – so learning becomes a way of life – helping
workers and organizations remain relevant.”
From the U.S. and France to Brazil, India and six other major
countries surveyed, people are surprisingly positive about the
impact of digital technology on the workplace. In fact, fully 84
percent of workers surveyed are optimistic about the impact of
digital on their job. More than two-thirds think that technologies
such as robots, data analytics and artificial intelligence will
help them be more efficient (74 percent), learn new skills (73
percent) and improve the quality of their work (66 percent).
Eighty-seven percent of these working people expect parts of
their job to be automated in the next five years, ranging from 93
percent of millennials to 79 percent of baby boomers. Of those who
expect automation, 80 percent anticipate more opportunities than
challenges in how automation will impact their work experiences in
the next five years. Additional Accenture research shows that
artificial intelligence alone has the potential to double the
annual economic growth rates and boost labor productivity by up to
40 percent by 2035 in the 12 developed countries examined.
Additionally, the values of today’s workforce will require
leaders to respond with a different range of rewards, benefits and
support. According to modeling undertaken by Accenture Strategy and
Gallup, non-financial factors, such as well-being, engagement,
quality of life and status are equal, if not more important to
workers than income and benefits.
“Creating the future workforce now is the responsibility of
every CEO. Those leaders who make their people a strategic business
priority and understand the urgency of this challenge will be the
ones that make the greatest gains in growth and innovation,” said
Mark Knickrehm, group chief executive, Accenture Strategy.
To help leaders navigate and shape the future workforce,
Accenture Strategy has the following recommendations:
- Accelerate reskilling: From top
to bottom, invest in technical and more human skills involving
creativity and judgment, taking advantage of the fact that 85
percent of workers are ready to invest their free time in the next
six months to learn new skills. Scale reskilling by using digital
technology. This can include wearable technologies, such as smart
glasses that provide technical advice and information as workers
carry out tasks. It can also include intelligent software to
personalize training that offers recommendations to support an
individual’s life-long learning needs.
- Redesign work to unlock human
potential: Co-create role-based, gig-like employment
opportunities to satisfy workers’ demands for more varied work and
flexible arrangements. Develop platforms through which a range of
resources and services can be offered to employees and freelancers
alike in order to create a compelling community that keeps top
talent loyal.
- Strengthen the talent pipeline from
its source: Address industry-wide skills shortages by
supporting longer term, collective solutions. These include public
private partnerships designed to create a broad adoption of skills
training. Work with the education sector to design curricula that
develop relevant skills at the beginning of the talent supply
chain.
Methodology
Accenture combined quantitative and qualitative research
techniques in order to analyze how responsive and responsible
leadership could help create the Future Workforce. The research
program is built on three pillars of a survey, econometric
modelling and an index, complimented by extensive secondary
research and in-depth interviews with leading experts from
universities, start-ups, large corporations and government
organizations.
The online survey was conducted in the U.S., Brazil, U.K.,
France, Germany, Australia, Italy, India, Japan and Turkey of
10,527 workers across skill levels and generations. The survey
was conducted between November 26 and December 9, 2016.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company,
providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy,
consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries
and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest
delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business
and technology to help clients improve their performance and create
sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately
394,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries,
Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and
lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
Accenture Strategy operates at the intersection of business
and technology. We bring together our capabilities in business,
technology, operations and function strategy to help our clients
envision and execute industry-specific strategies that support
enterprise wide transformation. Our focus on issues related to
digital disruption, competitiveness, global operating models,
talent and leadership help drive both efficiencies and growth. For
more information, follow @AccentureStrat or
visit www.accenture.com/strategy.
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AccentureTourang Nazari, + 1-202-322-4640Accenture
Strategytourang.nazari@accenture.com
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