Tuesday, July 16, 2013

FUTURE WORK SKILLS 2020



Global connectivity, smart machines, and new media are just some drivers that are reshaping the future landscape. This report looks at future work skills—proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings. This information concerns everyone, but specially to children who will have to face difficulties at their workplace. So if you are a teacher, please read the following information, so you can teach your students 21st century skills and have  a better idea about what the future work skills might be like. And your students will have more chances to be prepared for more demanding future jobs.



There are six drivers of change in this digital-age work:

  • a) EXTREME LONGEVITY. It is estimated that by 2025, the numbers of Americans over 60 will increase by 70%. That means that more elder people will need to work to earn money and pay for their health issues. They will demand more opportunities, products, and medical services to live active senior years. This demographic shift has already affected Mexico, where chains of supermarkets are hiring old people to do easy jobs as packing groceries.
  • b) RISE OF SMART MACHINES AND SYSTEMS. Smarter machines will replace humans in teaching, combat, medicine, security, and virtually every domain of our lives. We will be experiencing a plot like in the movie "The Rise of the Machines", where humans and machine have to fight a nuclear war in order to exist. We will be entering into a new kind of partnership with machines in means of collaboration and codependence.
  • c) COMPUTATIONAL WORLD. "Everything will be programmable". It means that with the use of data , some organizations could create more sophisticated smart TV's, smart cars, smart refrigerators, or even smart washing machines with voice control, for instance.
  • d) NEW MEDIA ECOLOGY. We are developing a new language for communication. For example, Qr Codes are everywhere nowadays: journals, advertisements, magazines, etc. The millions of users generating and viewing QR Codes from mobile devices are influencing on culture.
  • e) SUPERSTRUCTED ORGANIZATIONS. New technologies and social media platforms are reorganizing businesses. For instance, Mexican politicians are using new social tools to gain more votes for the coming elections on July 1st. In a way, more and more mexican citizens are being engaged in this driver of change.
  • f) GLOBALLY CONNECTED WORLD. Countries like India and China are innovating at a faster pace with mobile technologies. Employees need to be trained with new digital skills and infrastructure to be competitive in the digital world. 

FUTURE WORK SKILLS 2020

  1. Sense-Making: skills that help us create unique insights critical to decision making.
  2. Social Intelligence: to connect to others in a deep and direct way
  3. Novel and Adaptive Thinking: to respond to unique unexpected circumstances of the moment
  4. Cross-Cultural Competency: to operate in different cultural settings
  5. Computational Thinking: to understand data-based reasoning
  6. New Media Literacy: to critically assess and develop web content
  7. Trans-Disciplinarity: to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
  8. Design Mindset: to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
  9. Cognitive Load Management: to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools
  10. Virtual Collaboration: to work productively in virtual environments


Teachers, students and businessmen need to analyze these skills to take future visions and convert them into goals and actions to be prepared and succeed  in the future.  We got to continually reassess these skills with the right resources and infrastructure be updated.


I think that workers will need to become lifelong learners, otherwise they will not find well-paid jobs, or in the worst scenario, many workers will be replaced (and unemployed) by smart machines. Schools will need to interact new-media literacy into educational programs. 

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