The Future of Work and Learning
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here, and it is changing everything.
Invest, upskill, excel
A continuous learning culture is a key marker of high-performing organizations, but keeping up with changing skills needs presents new challenges for even the most established employers as the shelf life of skills grows. New research from D2L highlights the critical role of skills development in addressing talent retention and readiness for future disruption.
Enabling Learning for Life:
New Realities for Work and Education
To stay current, learners need easy, continuous access to affordable, relevant and industry-aligned learning that they can start and complete as they need to develop their skills. Often, they need that learning delivered while they continue to work. However, our current systems of education and workforce development remain in the early stages of adapting to workforce changes.
For continuous upskilling to become the norm, three things must happen:
- Higher education institutions must think creatively to develop new models that serve adult learners.
- Employers must invest in ongoing employee skills development.
- And governments must step up to provide financial support and help learners identify quality options for ongoing upskilling.
Enabling Upskilling at Scale
Small and medium-sized enterprises are struggling to provide the skills development opportunities their employees are looking for. A lifelong learning system with on-ramps and off-ramps throughout an individual’s life is essential to enable upskilling at scale. Employers need to invest in ongoing skills development, providing financial support and time off. Education and training providers need to offer options that serve the needs of working learners. And governments need to play a convening role to bring stakeholders together around a unified vision.
Maximizing Resilience
The challenges of 2020 have only accelerated trends that were already reshaping the landscape of skills and work. Working individuals are changing jobs or vocations more frequently in their careers, by choice and out of necessity, due to technological advances. Employability is determined less by general credential attainment and more by the ability to demonstrate the necessary skills for a job. The future demands a “Learning-Integrated Life”—in which individuals are always in a learning mindset, and intensive and episodic opportunities for learning are woven through the fabric of our lives, and prepared for successful careers and rich life experiences.
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