The Transition From Jobs to Skills is Happening. Are You Ready?

Transcript

Lachy Gray  

Welcome to our first episode of 2023. I'm looking forward to diving into skills and upskilling this year upskilling itself is not a new concept. I think what is new is the idea that job roles are a collection of skills that will change over time, and that we're transitioning away from thinking of what we do at work in terms of our job, to the actual skills that we apply daily. And these skills can then be used in hiring to determine pay promotions, and also where we want to go in the future for training and learning and development. And so this evolution is going to significantly impact how we work and learn in the workplace. And today's episode, we're going to unpack it. So Karen, where should we start? Would you like to discuss this change and what's driving it? Some detail?

Karen Kirton  

Yeah, it's a big topic, isn't it? And I think there's been some attempts around the edges to to nail this over the years but it definitely seems to be getting a lot more steam behind it from from different areas. And I think one of the things and we've spoken about this in other episodes before is the World Economic Forum's future of jobs report. They bring it out every couple of years. And you know, they always go through what those top skills are that are emerging and coming up. And yeah, I've always like to read through that report, but also to use that in terms of okay, well, what are the skills that we need to make sure we're putting in development programs for our clients for their leaders and their employees moving forward? Because the reality is a statistic statistics in the report as well that show that if we're not continually upskilling ourselves and developing ourselves then the roles that we do, could quite easily become redundant. And when I looked at that the top 10 skills for 2025, which is not far away, actually, although it feels like it's very far in the future. It's 32 years. Yeah, those top 10 You know, only two were related to technology. And I think that quite often people think about all the skills are all about technology, AI, machine learning and all these things that are popping up. But actually, there's only two related technology five problem solving, to to self management and one to working with people. So actually, you know, eight out of 10 of those top 10 skills that are acquired are those you know, so called soft skills. And I think it kind of makes sense, doesn't it if you think about automation and what's going on, because they also give the statistics about the rate of automation, which is that in 2020 is 60% of jobs were done by humans and that's going to be they say 53% in 2025. So I don't know if you've come across some of that in your work as well. You are a technology company. But so for your own employees Lachy what are the types of skills that you focus on upskilling people with

Lachy Gray  

hmm, yeah, we've, we've certainly think about the more human skills like to call them I think we can probably move away from soft skills and also power skills. I think they're being referred to to especially by Josh Burson, who's l&d researcher. Yeah, because I guess ultimately, most of the work that we do now is project based. And that's where the cross functional bunch of people being able to work well together, to communicate, to listen, to ask questions, to be flexible, to adapt. They're the skills that are really important. And were kicking this project off this year to really think about the skills that are within the jobs at the ATO and then to identify those that we really want to focus on and use that to inform our learning and development for the year and also our hiring. So for us as well, this is a big mindset shift. I mean, I don't think we've seen any roles that have become fully automated, but we are also looking at how we can use technology to moreso like do the admin side process side and free people up to focus on those areas where they can add the most value where they enjoy. So I actually think that's a positive.

Karen Kirton  

Yeah, no, I agree. And, you know, some of the other numbers in that report, you know, they say 50% of employees will need reskilling by 2025 and that 40% of current workers key skills are expected to change the next five years. So you know, they're pretty big numbers when you think about it. And the really the takeout is that if we ignore all of it, then you know, not only would we end up with people with skills that perhaps aren't so usable anymore and become redundant, but it also means that our business is not offering products and services that are required by the market anymore. And, you know, it's hard to talk about this topic without mentioning ChaCha UTP. I know people probably over hearing about chat JTF GPT but you know, it is everywhere. You can't really go anywhere without someone mentioning it or read an article you know, lots of different conversations and people about this and you know, use it myself to test it out in different ways. And I've heard people say, oh, you know, copywriters should be really worried because everyone's going to use this now for all their content. But you know, I think it's actually a great thing for copywriters because it shows how they can expand their skills and show value in different ways because it's actually the great thing about copywriters is actually their uniqueness and their humaneness that they can bring to the content. And make it stand out against this generic AI content. And I know that it will move and form over time, but at the moment, it's still pretty generic. If you ask it a question. You know, it gives you a very good answer, but it's not a human answer. If you if you like it's it's one of those ones where, you know, like, if you call a call center and you ask for an answer, and they give you the script, that's that's kind of what it feels like. And, you know, and there's obviously some emerging ethical issues as well, like particularly, you know, questions over copyright infringement with using that as well.

Lachy Gray  

For sure. Yeah, I think it's such a fascinating space, and it's got a lot of potential as you say, everything it is in its infancy and yeah, we need to be aware that it can be very confident and wrong. And even its founder, Sam Altman tweeted, saying that chat GPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. I love that. I think we got to keep that in mind. And I think it's the dials only to 2021 too. So still early days, but has huge potential. Yeah, I think, you know, to to point out copywriters, I mean, there have been tools like this around to write blog posts and copy for a while and I think it's more asking, well, what's the purpose of, say a blog post? Because if everyone's using AI to write them, yeah. Well, what's the point of that? Yeah. So for me, it's about okay, well, yeah, where can humans add value? I think that's a that's a positive thing. And we've been playing around with it tooth at ya know, and thinking about how can it help us draft an explanation so that we are questions and it's not saying that what it produces, we just use one to one it's like, it's a starting point that can be polished, or human because yeah, it is wrong. So we can't just assume that it's corrected needs to be reviewed by humans. So yeah, I think it's exciting. I think this is a big big change has been coming for a long time. And yes, perhaps some roles with very repetitive tasks will become automated. And hopefully, that will morph into roles with non repetitive tasks that really require people and then we think about, well, what are the skills that those people will need to work together? And yeah, I think a bunch of them will be these human skills that we're that we're talking about. So I think that's a really positive change.

Karen Kirton  

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it it comes back then to what are we teaching in schools and universities? And, you know, I remember when my kids first started school and as a parent, you start stressing out about oh, gosh, you know, do I need to teach them all these things before they go to school? You know, to show they need to know how to read and write and everything is working out the smartest kid in the class, got his stuff. And I remember my sister who's a deputy principal, and she said to me, all you need to do is teach your kids to be polite. She said everything else we teach them at school, we're going to teach them how to read and how to write, but we can't teach them those behaviors because you're the one that's demonstrating that at home, and is the person responsible for your child being a good human? So and I think that's really true. But I also think that we're getting to a point that we actually need to take some of those humans skills within school and university as well rather than just, you know, read this book and give us the exam because, you know, with AI doing what it's doing at the moment, if I have an essay question, why don't I just ask that to the AI and then like, you say, I might get a response that I use as my basis so I'm actually do I still need to critically think like it's it's really quite interesting actually, where all this may go and of course, you know, legislation never catches up with any of this either. So I do feel for lectures in this space, because they're probably going to end up with lots of things that kind of look and sound about the same because people are starting to use more and more of this software but but it does go into you know, what are we teaching people to start off with when they first start working and then in the workplace, then how are we then continually upskilling from there?

Lachy Gray  

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think this is really a fascinating conversation to be to be having, and I think in the media this week, might have been the end of last year. There are some university lecturers saying that they were blown away by the responses that church abt gave to some of their essay questions they put in and that there are unis looking at returning to paper based assessments because yeah, this you're not supposed to use AI in your responses, but how are they going to know? Yes. So then it's, as you say, it's about well, what are the principles that we need to learn? Which is more about learning to learn? I still think critical thinking is really important because and similarly not not to say is that also what we read in the media? Yes. We just accept it. Yes. Especially if it comes from someone that we like and that we trust and who has authority, or we still remain skeptical and we look for other points of reference, and then we look for a counter position, like those skills are really important. And I guess, yeah, that does raise the question of where's the role of knowledge in this like what do you actually need to know because facts are going to change so quickly? Is it more about these underlying principles and skills how to use the tools because of course the tools are going to be different as well. Yes. Very short period of time. So there's no point getting really in depth in in a particular tool. It's going to change or chat to BT and the parent company open AI that might get bought. Then that's going to change overnight, potentially. So yeah, again, I think technology is is a how it's a way to achieve something. It's not the end in of itself. Then we're going to remote remember that?

Karen Kirton  

Yeah, for sure. And I think that yeah, I was having some conversations over the Christmas break with some friends and it starts to get really overwhelming when you think about some of this stuff. So I think if we kind of try and bring it back and say okay, well what does that mean for us? In the workplace, then I think there's an imperative here that if you want to have a business that's going to be able to survive in the longer term, then you really need to start focusing much more on upskilling your employees and not just seeing development as an add on or benefit it needs to be actually a core competency of your business.

Lachy Gray  

Yeah, absolutely. So I think if we, we fast forward a few years and think about how this could work in practice, hiring could be based on your skills, rather than tenure or job history. So the old resume could be on the way out, not not such a bad thing, probably. career growth, that's just an inherent part of work. Because you identify the skills that you want to learn and improve that and then your employer facilitates it needs to be a way for that to be facilitated to predict teams could be created based on the skills required for the project to succeed rather than let's just get a bunch of people certain job titles together, and hope that they've got the skills that we need. Your salary can be based on your skills and skill maturity, rather than a one line job title. But also that each of us could own and develop our skills by outside of any organization, employer, and so on. So we could have a stand alone on a representation of the skills that we got out there we enjoy that we're interested in that we want to develop. And then we look to organizations to help us grow them. But they might be whether we're working for them or not. I think that's, that's really positive.

Karen Kirton  

So it sounds great, doesn't it? Because I think we've been talking about transferable skills for a long time and companies say that, you know, we're going to hire for transferable skills. But, you know, how practical is that? And can we do it at the moment without bias as well and I'll give you an example to explain what I mean. So, Robin in my team, just this week, we saw a role advertised for a customer service position. And it explained that you know, things that you needed was you know, energy learning your skills communication in a customer relationships. etc. And then it said experience is not required. Remember, we're talking about that, because she quite rightly pointed out that it how are they going to assess that criteria that they had in the role without bringing in personal bias because they're still using the traditional, if you like, interview process, so there was nothing on there to say that it was going through any kind of AI or, you know, other software program. So you know, and unless you're using some really sophisticated technology that has really good predictive reliability, which we don't really seem to have a lot of, but we will probably we will get there. So at the moment, it can still be really problematic, because if I have someone come in for an interview, and I might think, Oh, look at that, you know, they've got so much energy and they can communicate really well. But maybe they're just having a really good day or you know, they're just putting that on and that's just the personality type. Whereas the next person coming in who might be a little bit more subdued, you know, perhaps they've actually got more energy for the entire day, perhaps they're more able to communicate with a wider range of people like how do you assess for that so so I think that yeah, it's a great idea. We need the transferable skills, but then we need a way to actually make sure that we're assessing for them in a way that's not prejudicial or bias. I think some of your other points, you know, sounds great as like career growth, like if I can get career growth because I can say, well, these are the skills that I have and these are the ones that I want there's my process for getting there. You know, that's gonna get me that new job. You know, the project teams created on skills and we kind of touched on that last year with whole brain thinking when we were talking to to Michael, in that they create teams based on people's thinking styles, so you could really start to layer things into that current view. Because you could have the skills you could have thinking styles, you know, you may have personality in the you know, whatever it might be to go okay, that's the best team for that and so I think it's really exciting. But I do think we need a little bit more advancement in technology to help us to get there and to make it available to everybody rather than just big companies with big budgets and lots of employees.

Lachy Gray  

Yeah, it's the same old challenge, isn't it? Everyone's with the money. They're the ones with the data and the people to throw at this problem. And it's a big problem. It's, it's it has promise. But there are some big challenges with it. I think. A lack of consistent language when we talk about what is a skill, what is the capability? How do you group them, how do they relate to each other? That is a big challenge. And Jobs and Skills Australia is a new government department that is tackling this as we speak. So if you're interested in this area, I would encourage you to check out that website. You could buy the into the skills classes they have where they've grouped, like skills together. And also by occupation, you can have a look at the skills that they think are needed to do that occupation along with the core competencies, like writing, reading, numeracy, and so on. So it is underway. And I think it's really, really good that an independent news case government body is doing that because if it's only private or public companies developing developing proprietary skills databases, as you say, that's not going to help the broader market. The speed of change in skills as well. So the World Economic Forum report that you mentioned earlier, so they say that 40% of workers will require rescaling every six months or less. That's crazy fast. Online. Yes. Although I was thinking about this as well, I think because the the language has changed from say job titles, the skills job titles probably change less often. Skills change all the time, so we should probably expect the writer change to be a lot faster. Still, how do you track and capture news and then update and then retire them? Who's been asked? How confident can we be that whoever has done it has done it in the right way? And then as well in that report, they say that 94% of business leaders expect employees to pick up new skills on the job and the onus is on new employee. So how is that gonna work? I mean, clearly there needs to be collaboration between employers and organizations for this to have any hope of of working.

Karen Kirton  

Yeah. I'm still stuck on your statistic of 40% requiring reskilling every six months. It just sounds tiring does. And yeah, I know that there's conversations I've been having with friends, particularly tech friends around AI and machine learning. And I wondered tufts, which is the accurate tool for this stuff. Because it was just really exploding my mind. I was just like, can I just step out of the workforce? Like, it's crazy? You know, because technology is the answer as we get better at defining and assessing skills and being able to develop them because it should land us in an era where we can retrain and upskill without putting ourselves in a box of, you know, well, you've only ever worked in this particular industry. And so therefore, you can only apply for jobs in that industry. Or you know, you've only ever done that job so you can only ever do that job you can't break out of it, which is really that's what happens to most people really by the time they turn 30 is whatever's happened in your career to that date. It's very difficult to move out of that typically without losing money. Because, you know, there's other industries or you know, there's new job or say, Well, you've never done this before. And so I think Well geez, if we can get better at these, then you know, perhaps the skills shortages won't be quite so exacerbated if we have that approach because then I would be able to understand, Okay, well these are the skills that apply to that job within my business and if I use you know that Jobs and Skills Australia website that you mentioned before, and you introduced me to, and I mapped those skills to my particular jobs, and that gives that common language in that taxonomy to say to people, okay, well, they're the skills that we're looking for. And if you can demonstrate that you have those skills, then you can get this job and therefore you don't need that experience. So yeah, I do think it's really exciting from that perspective, but also from my existing staff. So one of the things we were doing prior to recording this episode is Lachy and I work in testing some different jobs in that website. And so I could say, Okay, well, I work in a call center at the moment and I want to be a call center manager, and actually look at those different skill sets across those two and then go to my manager and say, okay, you know, I think these are the particular skills that I want to learn and put together a development plan for that and I think that's a great way of your business idle listening to these that you could start to help your staff to develop no matter the size of your business, is because your employees as well will say, Oh, this is actually a common language to skills that perhaps other organizations down the track will value and recognize as well.

Lachy Gray  

Exactly. It really breaks away from this siloed approach that we've probably had for a very long time, haven't we? Like that? Almost, and perhaps this was what school was designed for to teach you specific buckets of knowledge that you can go into specific roles and your work in those roles for your career. And that is changing in a very significant way. And I think one area is Yeah, moving towards this sort of marketplace. of skills. And that's actually led by the employee by the person rather than their manager. So historically, managers decided on your value in your career path, what learning you do courses you'd go on but with the rise of this skills, concept, and people changing jobs, so often being part of cross functional teams, these talent marketplaces become required. So they identify skills and then recommend content accordingly. So, as a learner you can take control of your own learning and of course, you can still collaborate with with your manager for their support, but you're not beholden to them, saying yes or no to something that you want to develop because we know that career development and growth I think it's one of the key reasons people leave an organization, isn't it? Yeah,

Karen Kirton  

yeah. It's continually like it used to be that with flexible work, which is probably cut down a bit further down. But yeah, it repeatedly comes up in the top three as to the reason why people leave a job or start a job somewhere else is because they feel they need more growth and development. Yeah.

Lachy Gray  

Yeah, so I think it does put a lot of pressure on the technology because to enable this to enable this talent marketplace, skills identification, matching it to learning. As things stand, you're combining a bunch of different systems like a learning management system, an XP content libraries, somewhere in their skills, library or index. So big companies like Cornerstone have been tackling this. But I think it also puts pressure on HR and l&d to understand not only the technology but also the business problems that we're trying to solve it. So, HR becomes more of a tech integrator, which they may or may not want to do. So. How do you see HR is role changing in this landscape?

Karen Kirton  

Yeah, there is a lot of talk about HR and tech and the intersection of that. And I think like all roles, it's going to change the competencies required by HR professionals, but I think you're also going to see jobs being split out a little bit as well into, you know, those that are more customer facing, so to speak. So the ones that are more frontline with employees and then ones that are actually looking at the back end strategy, and how technology supports that. And, you know, there's already HR tech conferences and different groups and things that are happening and you know, when you even just looking at things like the metaverse and how that's going to impact on training of employees over the next five or 10 years. So there's a lot in that space. But I think at the moment, it's still very much in the remit of the big businesses. But it doesn't mean that small businesses should ignore it because I think there are other options out there. And you know, I can give a plug for Jana. To say, you know, there are other options that smaller businesses can also use to say, Okay, well how do we, you know, get this upskilling and training happening with our business and I think you're going into takeaways, perhaps here but you know, I think one of the things that people can do now we're at the start of 2023 is everyone's trying to make plans for the year. It's time to think about what are your current learning development processes within your business? How can you actually map the skills required in the business now versus in 12 months, three years, five years? And then do your processes actually support the upskilling of your people to what you're going to need in the next couple of years as well?

Lachy Gray  

Yeah, and use that to inform decision, learning, calendar career paths and then the technology comes after that. So yeah, I do think it's easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest technology and there's this speed of change can make it overwhelming. I think that if we take a step back and remind ourselves that, ultimately, technology is helping us to solve problems, so we continue to focus on the business problems and use that as a lens to identify and filter out technology that might help and I think to just experiment with the technology, tap GPT. It's good fun. I recommend having a play with it. Check out jobs skills in Australia, as well. And there are probably similar sites around the world as well, to get familiar with this, because it's a change that is happening. It's kind of happen. And it makes sense for us to be across it so we we can make the most of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that yeah, I was just reflecting on one of the programs I did with the client, we actually call it skill up. And we would do one every couple of years based on those World Economic Forum, emerging skills. And I was just starting to think about oh, you know what, now I can actually start mapping that to those Australian skills. Within that job skills Australia, website as well. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there, but you're quite right. It's actually picking out what's the one that's going to make the most difference to my business, like what are the problems that we're actually trying to solve here?

Karen Kirton  

And then what do we need to do? And I think one of the simple places to start is really just looking at what you have at the moment in terms of developing your employees and say, Okay, well, can we start to shift that a little bit into development of skills and what I like to call mindset, versus just saying, Okay, off you go, go and do your, you know, learning course, at some generic place in the city for three days on machine learning. Think that there are different ways that that we can develop and we start breaking out our mindset open a little bit to Okay, what does that look like?

Lachy Gray  

Absolutely. Well, that's all we have. Time for today. So links to articles and anything else we've discussed will be over on our websites jano.com Today, you amplify hr.com Today, you just follow the links to the podcast section.

Karen Kirton  

And if you've received value from this episode, we would love it if you could leave a rating or review over at Apple podcasts coming up in the next episode, we're gonna chat with pre Sarkar from switch careers who I've known pre for for many years is a great friend is a great business leader. And we're going to talk to him about how to hire for the right behaviors which is a very difficult thing to do.

Lachy Gray  

So that podcast episode is coming up two weeks from now. So if you click the subscribe button to get notified when it's available. Any final thoughts, Karen,

Karen Kirton  

I think we've covered a lot for the first episode or 2023. So perhaps a slight apology. To the listeners. I hope that it's given you food for thought about how you can look at upskilling and your business this year.

Lachy Gray  

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. And we'll see you next time on the Make It Work podcast.