The Challenging Changes to Work

The technological changes we are seeing in the world today are unprecedented. Never has technology been more powerful, more available or cheaper than it is today and we are just at the beginning. The projected growth of technology in the next two years is purported to be as much as we have seen in the whole of history. This will have a greater impact on the way we live and work than any of us can imagine.

Concurrent with this is an ongoing concern about the impact of continuing skills shortages on business which CEOs in New Zealand and globally see as a major concern. Both issues mean it is vitally important to reassess the way we educate and the content of our education. It is critical that as we build an increasingly complex economy in our city and our region we have students at all levels being prepared in an optimal way to participate in and across that economy.

The expectations of education outcomes are changing markedly. Employers are looking for young New Zealanders to be able to relate well to others, to be motivated and reliable, to be resilient and enterprising, literate and numerate and to be informed decision makers while being critical and creative thinkers. These attributes are going to be increasingly important as we consider the dynamic future that awaits young people.

Education, particularly at a secondary school level, is not just about allowing young people to make immediate choices that confront them at the end of school but is about ensuring young people are equipped to consider their career paths throughout life. Their career paths will markedly be influenced by changes in the workplace driven by technology. It is legitimate to ask whether our education system will have the ability to keep pace with the changes confronting us.

There are already robots that are perfectly capable of doing background legal research for complex court cases. There are robots that are much more accurate in their pathological diagnosis than human beings. We are seeing the beginnings right here in this city of autonomous electric vehicles, with one being trialled at Christchurch International Airport. Some are predicting that a simple cellphone will be as powerful as the human brain within eight years.

The collection, interpretation and use of data is increasing exponentially to the extent that already some of us are becoming concerned about who is collecting it and what they are using it for.

I can recall in the 1970’s when computer technology was just starting to ramp up that some of us thought the requirement for employees would materially drop over time as computers took over. That did not happen, but slowly and surely, workplace dynamics changed. There are many things that cellphones and computers are doing now that use to be done manually usitlising large numbers of people.

Opportunities for work will continue. However, the work will be different. Employees will have strong literacy language and numeracy skills and increasingly need skills of communication and corporation, computation, computer mastery, creativity, and critical thinking. Tomorrow’s employees will need to be able to think across traditional disciplines make connections and solve problems. Already division of labour is increasingly in teams rather than in hierarchy of command. The old model of educated managers supervising the less educated workforce has gone. So as we face our future we need to be putting much more emphasis on educating our young people in new ways to embrace what is ahead of us. That is a significant challenge for us all.