Institute For The Future

3 New Invaluable Work Skills for 2018

@asaulgoldman

What skills will workers need to succeed in tomorrow's workplace?

Forces as diverse as automation, the sharing economy, and online labor markets are redefining work. Every month, Uber adds 50,000 new drivers around the world; a company is busy building an automatic hamburger-making machine while others are exploring the power of Artificial Intelligence to diagnose cancer. 47% of traditional US jobs are susceptible to automation within the next couple decades, while other sectors of the human economy are booming. Online labor markets like Upwork (formerly oDesk) are globalizing knowledge work the same way outsourcing globalized manufacturing in the 20th century.  We live in a time of growing uncertainty around the future of jobs and work. IFTF has been researching the future of work throughout most of its 46 year history; recently, our Future Work Skills 2020 highlighted 10 important new skills for succeeding in the workplace.   

It's time to update that list based on our current research. Let’s take a look at 3 new valuable work skills for 2018:

1. Self-Motivation:
In a world of infinite free online learning options, who wins?

IFTF’s extreme learners report profiles people thriving in the new ecosystem of abundant learning options.  The path to harnessing these resources is far from ‘figured out’. In the Wild West of online courses, more than 90% of students choose not to complete free classes they’ve signed up for.  People get bored and lose interest.  And yet, this very same resource has the power to change lives and connect learners with jobs.  Google is hiring more and more workers who didn’t go to college. Currently, most MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) are little more than video lectures and problem sets.  Those who can maintain interest centered around a set of longer-term goals and intrinsic motivators come out on top.

The point is that the bottleneck is no longer in access to information. Our education system is geared around extrinsic motivators- systems and incentives outside the individual that motivate them to succeed.  In a world in which communications technology and project management software cut costs and reduce the need for middle managers, there will be fewer extrinsic motivators in the workplace.  Workers will be relied upon to accomplish without superiors standing over their shoulders.

Whether gaining skills to find a job, or thriving in that job, being a ‘go-getter’ has never mattered more.  

2. Managing Time Across Income Sources:
What skills are needed to thrive outside the 9-5?

Uber adds 50,000 new drivers a month.  The sharing economy, platform economy, or informal economy- whatever your preferred term- is growing rapidly.  Although Uber doesn’t publish its driver salaries, the average full-time driver probably makes between 40k-60k- substantially more than minimum wage. In addition, conventional part-time work is on the rise, leaving more workers to dabble in this growing sector on the side.

For workers without high-demand skills considering their employment options, entering the platform economy seems appealing. Yet a lack of regulation, benefits, and labor protections means our social safety net might be failing these workers. Increasingly, workers operate on multiple platforms to patch together stable income.  It turns out being your own boss has the drawbacks of needing to find work for yourself.  Over time, ease of access to working on these platforms will result in the market driving down wages through simple supply-demand dynamics.

In the meantime, being a successful entrepreneur here requires a whole new set of skills- understanding exactly how and where your time is best spent.  What platforms are under-populated by workers? When and how can you combine different jobs? As more and more startups release services built around the informal workforce, from food shopping to maid service and beyond, those who see their time as a valuable resource and can do the math are most likely to find stable work.

3. Online Labor Market Management:
In a truly global economy, what does it take to be a manager?

The workforce truly is globalizing.  Services like Upwork (formerly oDesk) and Elance make it possible to contract workers online anywhere for any task imaginable- from a short-term voiceover gig to recurring weekly coding work.  A programmer outsourced his own job to China.  A FREE app, CamFind, uses workers in the Philippines to tag images computer recognition algorithms can’t make sense of. If you thought ‘outsourcing’ has reached its logical conclusion, you’re wrong. One estimate places the online staffing agency market at $5 Billion by 2018, although that’s incredibly, incredibly conservative. Already, Kelly, a national leader in hiring services, is partnering with Upwork (formerly oDesk) as ‘a component of its talent supply chain’.   

The cost of living differential in developing countries will have a huge impact on how wages are allocated in the coming years.  Why would a company create entry level jobs in the US when they could outsource those jobs, and pay someone in-house instead to manage quality control on that large remote workforce? Imagine a world where entry level workers at American companies are expected to be familiar with Upwork (formerly oDesk), given a budget, and told to get tasks accomplished in the most effective way possible. The startup Locu has an in-house team of 20 and works with between 300 and 600 Upworkers (formerly oDeskers) a day.

Self-motivation, managing time across diverse income sources, and online labor market management are three new skills that must change the way we think about education, HR, and workforce preparedness. In highly hierarchical workplaces, middle management had their hands on projects, so worker self-motivation didn’t matter. In traditional, full-time employment models, it was the responsibility of management and HR to figure out optimal use of a worker’s hours. And in the old way of doing things, workers needed to be able to do work, rather than ‘get things done.'  

… Where will you be in 2018?

Next for the Future of Work

An upcoming IFTF report will take this research further to explore the future of youth employment.  How are these technologies going to impact vulnerable youth in their job search and work life?  What can community organizations, foundations, and governments do to aid youth in finding jobs in an increasingly automated world?  These serious questions deserve serious consideration, and the upcoming report aims to tackle them to present a complete perspective on the youth employment landscape.