Earlier this year McKinsey released another in their series of future of work reports, Skill Shift: Automation and the Future of the Workforce.
The key finding from our perspective is that corporations are increasingly agility as a key business requirement. Key quote on how companies define agility:
Agility has acquired a specific meaning in management terms, as the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous and sometimes turbulent environment.
And according to the report, an important way to increase business agility is to use more contingent labor. Again from the report:
Another important byproduct of the move toward more team-based work and agile organizations is the potential for companies to hire independent contractors to supply specific skills at specific times. In our survey, greater use of various types of freelancers and temporary workers is one of the top organizational changes. When asked about what types of labor company leaders were planning on using most in the future, 61 percent said they expected to hire more temporary employees.
Because of this, McKinsey believes "the independent workforce could consequently continue its growth in the future."
In addition to greater use of independent workers and contingent labor, McKinsey suggests 4 other actions companies can take to build the workforce of the future. These are:
Retrain. Raise skill levels of employees by teaching them new or more advanced skills.
Redeploy. Shift parts of the workforce by redefining work tasks or redesigning processes to make better use of the skill capacities already available in-house.
Hire. Acquire individuals or teams with the required skill sets.
Release. A nice way of saying staff reduction.
The report chart below - the major consulting firms are great at charts - shows the skills that will be needed more, and needed less, in the future (click to enlarge).
Not surprisingly physical, manual and basic cognitive skills will be needed less.
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