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People used to say: “Shoemaker, stick to your reading”. History shows that staying with your 'read' is not always wise. Sometimes retraining or upskilling to improve your future prospects is a good idea. How about the towing boat hunter, the lantern lighter, brikkenbakker and the togamaker? Right! You won't find these professions anymore today. More recently, occupations have also disappeared. Think of the man who developed photo rolls or the post office counter staff. As you can see, it's a natural process that occupations come and go with time.
The current field of work will change rapidly due to automation and digitization. This phenomenon is called the robot revolution. The robot revolution means that work that can be standardized will disappear. During a revolution, occupations disappear faster than usual. Of course, there have been rumors for some time that a lot is about to change, but it is really getting closer. You can compare the time in which we find ourselves now with the industrial revolution. Back then, people switched from manual work to large-scale machine production. As a result, many craftsmen had to “retrain” or “retrain” rapidly by learning new skills. Without retraining or refresher courses, you had a bad future perspective at the time. After all, making goods by hand was no longer lucrative.
According to the WEF, few people currently have the skills that will be in demand in the next 5 years. The gap between what is expected from companies in the near future and the skills they have today can only be closed through retraining or refresher courses. So, for a good future perspective, you'd do well to think about refresher or retraining opportunities. This is the only way that you will have the qualities that will soon be expected of you in a timely manner. Because hey, let's face it, who wants a similar future perspective as a flashlight or a brick baker?
Just a few figures from the research. On average, companies expect that around 40 percent of employees will have to retrain. And even 94 percent of managers say they expect their employees to retrain in addition to their daily work. This is a significant increase of 29 percent compared to 2018, and in short, gaining new skills, retraining and/or upskilling is considered a must in this study.
As stated earlier, the robot revolution will cause a lot of jobs to disappear. It is estimated that around 85 million jobs worldwide. At the same time, a lot of new jobs are being created. This is a total of approximately 97 million. So more jobs will be added than will disappear. That is good news! Not entirely unexpectedly, 'almost' all jobs with a good future perspective fall into the IT category. The image below shows the top 20 jobs with a very favorable future perspective. Do you see your current job in the right-hand row? Then it might be wise to think about retraining or refresher courses for a more favorable future perspective.
Employees are increasingly expected to have different digital skills. The skills that will become very important in various jobs over the next 5 years are: Data and AI, Product Development, Cloud Computing and Engineering. The big question is whether everyone who sees their job disappear can have the desired skills quickly enough through retraining or refresher courses. Do you have one or more skills from the image below? Then you are completely ready for the future.
Not only have working from home and online meetings been fully established in the past year, remote learning is also here to stay. Four times as many people started online training last year, according to the WEF study. Not surprising, considering that there is a significant knowledge gap to close.
Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to sit in school for several years these days. Learning has become much more modular than before. As a result, flexible retraining or refresher training is possible today. Where you used to have a learning path where you were required to attend school for 8 consecutive hours, you can now learn where and when you want. Whether that's on the train, in a coffee shop or at the kitchen table. The choice is yours. Because you can study whenever you want, it is possible to retrain to a job with a better future perspective within a few months. Curious about how others managed to do this? Check out the stories of Sander, Lin Ny and Blackbird.
