'The Great Reskilling' is the next chapter in today's ongoing employment saga

The past few years have seen a great deal of change and turmoil in the employment landscape, from the pandemic-driven shift to remote work, to "The Great Resignation" and "Quiet Quitting." In the months and years to come, there's likely going to be another chapter of upheaval as well — one we may as well begin calling "The Great Reskilling."

As artificial intelligence and other game-changing technologies begin to see widespread adoption, we're likely to see significant disruption to the workforce. Roles that exist today may soon disappear, and others we can't yet predict will soon emerge. We will soon find ourselves in a situation where organizations that hope to secure top talent will have to dramatically reconsider the way they hire. 

Read more: How Equifax upskilled more than 1,000 employees in record time

No longer will it be sustainable to hire someone with 10 years of relevant experience when half of the roles you're hiring for have only existed for a couple of years. And in order to meet these novel needs, companies will have to use emerging technologies to their advantage.

Tomorrow's employment landscape remains largely unknown
Generative AI Prompt Designer, AI Ethicist, Metaverse Manager… there will soon be a wide variety of new, unfamiliar roles emerging in the employment landscape. And for every one example of a position we can anticipate coming down the pike, there are likely to be five others that none of us are able to rightly predict today. 

In addition to technological developments, economic, environmental and geopolitical disruption is likely to compound the changes we see in our employment landscape. Trends such as near-shoring, supply-chain challenges and the global energy transition will all almost certainly contribute to a tomorrow in which human capital is increasingly needed to fill novel and largely unpredictable roles. 

Read more: 4 ways organizations fail to upskill and retain their talent

Indeed, The World Economic Forum's fourth annual Future of Jobs Report reveals that 85% of global organizations consider "increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broadening digital access" as the trends most likely to drive transformation in their organization. These forces are followed closely by broader application of Environmental, Social and Governance standards. 

The coming skills disconnect — the divide between what's needed and what's available 
For these emerging positions, there almost certainly won't be enough existing talent to fill the coming need. Organizations that wish to stay ahead will have to rethink the traditional talent acquisition process, forgoing past experience and instead hiring or promoting people based on their capacity to learn, their enthusiasm for the role, and their overall fit — not their existing knowledge base. 

The OECD estimates that over one billion people will need to be reskilled or upskilled by 2030 to meet tomorrow's labor needs. Meanwhile, research from the World Economic Forum has found that investment in reskilling and upskilling of the current global workforce has the potential to boost GDP by $6.5 trillion in the same timeframe. 

Read more: When upskilling benefits went unused, Checkr redesigned its program to empower employees

Studies have shown that training and development initiatives already have an outsized influence on corporate performance — with organizations that invest in training and development seeing, on average, double the profits compared to organizations that do not. So, it stands to reason that, in such a landscape as that forecasted by the OECD and WEF, the same training and development programs will almost certainly become make or break competitive differentiators. The question that remains, then, is how will corporations get a leg up in this newly hyper-competitive space?

Emerging technologies may be both the cause of and the solution to tomorrow's labor challenges
According to The World Economic Forum, six in ten workers will require workplace training before 2027, but only half of workers are seen to have access to adequate training opportunities. In order to close this dramatic divide, corporations will likely have to rethink their approach to workforce development altogether. Thankfully, there are efforts already being made through the use of emerging technologies that might give the world's enterprises a fighting chance at meeting this challenge successfully. 

In just the past few years, we've seen virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies — often collectively referred to as "extended reality" (XR) — take hold as workplace tools, used for everything from collaboration and conferencing, to safety training. And while current rates of adoption remain somewhat low, these technologies are already showing immense potential as a means for scaling and optimizing workforce development in a way that's equitable, accessible, and sustainable. 

We've also seen the emergence of novel training strategies, such as gamification, used in corporate learning and development with considerable success. In fact, a recent survey of knowledge workers found that 89% of employees feel gamification makes them more productive at work, while 88% said it made them happier. Meanwhile, 25% felt it would help make learning and development more effective. 

These trends have grown in concert with an explosion in online learning and development platforms, and even mobile applications, designed to assist in the upskilling and reskilling of employees. And if we hold confidence in the belief that necessity is the mother of invention, odds are that the impending skills gap will likely only drive further technological innovation in this space.

Preparing for the unknown requires agility, diverse toolsets
Moving forward, it won't be enough to simply put one's faith in the education system to pivot and produce enough graduates with the skills needed to fulfill the changing employment landscape. Many would argue that higher education doesn't do all that good of a job at preparing individuals for the workforce as it is. This will only become that much more difficult as the rate of innovation increases and traditional areas of study fall increasingly out of step with real-world market demands. 

At the end of the day, preparing for the unknown is all about maximizing one's agility, and ensuring one has the best toolset at your disposal. It's virtually impossible to accurately predict who will become tomorrow's industry leaders. But, whoever emerges on top will almost certainly be the companies that are best equipped for quick pivots, and those that effectively master the art of workforce learning and development. 

In a world where the future remains largely unknown, those that are prepared for anything will almost certainly come out on top.