The future of our jobs

The future of our joba

One of the most important skills now and in the future is to be flexible. “Classic job profiles as they exist now will be more and more replaced by skills and competences and their different combinations”, said speaker Cornel Müller, head marketing and business development at the internet company x28.

A pwc study shows that by 2030 the tasks and duties workers will perform will be markedly different from what they have studied. In-the-moment-learning will become the modus operandi, and the ability to gain new knowledge will be valued above the knowledge people already have. The same study asserts that around 85 percent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.

“Project-based work will increase over the next years”, emphasized Stephan Sigrist, founder of the think tank W.I.R.E. in his presentation at the transfer meeting of Employees Switzerland. The gig economy offers the opportunity to have several jobs at the same time, but on the other hand it calls for more personal-responsibility.

The following skills will play a huge role in the future:

1. Creativity

2. Human understanding

3. Complex problem solving

4. Analytical and conceptional way of thinking

5. Optimizing and Planning

6. Dealing with human beings

7. Working with other cultures

8. Sensomotor skills

9. Virtual team work

10. Negotiation

11. Cognitive Flexibility

12. Emotional Intelligence

New Jobs on the market

Technology such as robots and algorithmas will replace certain jobs, but they have, on the other hand, brought new jobs to the market. For example: user interface designers, data scientists or mobile app developers.

In the future, there will be even more new jobs, most of which you probably haven’t heard about yet. Examples are: waste data manager, biohacker, avatar designer, IoT architect or augmented reality journey builder, to mention just a few.

Employees who have a job with a high level of repetitive work and/or who operate with big amounts of data at work are more likely to face automatization. There will still be many jobs that can only be done by human beings and that remain in in demand on the market, especially in the fields healthcare, education and even retail, a McKinsey Global Institute report shows. Complex tasks and tasks which require an emotional relationship or empathy will still be done by human beings.

So the risk that a robot will pull your tooth if necessary or give you personal advice when it comes to emotions or relations, is rather low.

Here are the good news:

Many jobs that have been transferred to Asia and other countries will be brought back to Switzerland, thanks to digitization. Cleaner electricity production, cleaner electric engines and 3D-Printers can be operated in Switzerland at the same cost as in other parts of the world.

Another advantage of digital technology is that routine work can be automated. Our attitude towards work will subsequently become more. Independent workers will increasingly offer their services on digital platforms such as Upwork, Uber or Etsy. Thus they challenge conventional ideas about how and where we work.

Would you like to learn what the automation risk of your job is and if you should train for a new one? On www.job-trends.ch you will find out.

Ariane Modaressi