Reskilling in the Digital Age

Reskilling in the Digital Age
The reliance on technology in every industry is calling for employees with up to date technology skills in order to continue to be of value in their workplace. This is in stark contrast to just 30 years ago where the main demand was for cheap, unskilled, manual labor for factories across the globe. But manual labor has since been replaced by automation in almost every industry, leading to greater efficiency and production, fundamentally changing the role of human employees from simple factory line workers, to more sophisticated roles involving the installation, calibration, operation and management of technology systems. 
Globally, business has become highly reliant on technology which has led to a greater demand for technology fluent employees and has raised the bar of expectation, with companies now starting to invest in training and technology programmed to empower their employees with the skills needed to operate a modern business. Therefore ongoing digitization of industry means that those with manual skills are finding themselves with fewer opportunities. A clear case of this was seen during the lockdowns in 2020 where such workers found themselves in extremely vulnerable positions. 
The magnitude of the change to digital is akin to the change from agricultural to industrial that occurred in the early part of the 20th century. This saw a major shift in the attitude, skills and opportunities for both workers and companies alike. Unlike that change, the newer digital revolution is happening at a much faster pace and the curve of change is much steeper. The transformation in earlier workforces took place over many years, if not decades, allowing a much smoother transition to a more skilled workforce as well as allowing companies to prepare their environments better for such changes. Today, this rapid reskilling is a challenge facing every sector, especially in light of the fact that millions of middle aged workers  need to be reskilled quickly.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has spent significant time looking into this and note that the challenge bridging the skills gap is a huge challenge which companies cannot address alone. An entire framework of re-training need to be put in place on national levels to develop robust re-training facilities to mitigate the digital skills divide.
What is needed is a multi-pronged approach and a strong private-public partnership in order to effectively address this. Governments must take a leading role and develop the hard infrastructure within nations for the digital economy so people can access knowledge resources. Up to date curricula and training schemes must be developed in line with the private sector requirements so that talented individuals are produced and inclusive policies and frameworks are designed to become conducive to digital skills development. Effective outreach programmed must also be established so that people can easily access such training which must be of the highest caliber and endorsed by the relevant training bodies.
All this must be done in conjunction with the private sector, in particular technology companies, to determine what skills are required now and what will be needed in the near future. It is crucial that people are re-trained regardless of age, gender, disability or race, within a coherent, transparent framework that avoids inequalities, with skills that are required in the marketplace.
For the younger generation, I propose that such training should be built into school education so that as well as receiving an academic education, our youth are empowered with digital skills and certificates from the get-go, so that we do not face the similar problems in the future. We need to promote lifelong learning and skills development through all strata of our educational hierarchy, starting from kindergarten all the way through to our Universities. 
I find it unacceptable to hear that even after receiving degrees, many of our youth lack the necessary skills to work in the digital economy. This is a problem that we must address from its very roots as otherwise we will be setting up our future generation for failure, excluding them from the ample opportunities in digital economy.
As a glaring reminder to us all, this region’s oil reserves will only take it that far, as they will run dry by 2050. We must use the resources we have to become leaders in the field of digital technology which can only happen if we are serious about change. 
The only way that we can build our economies well enough to weather future storms is by building digital capacity and becoming beacons of technology innovation and excellence.