How to accelerate digital literacy in the enterprise world.

Byline: Christian Umbach

The impact of automation on the workforce is stark: 59% of Germans will see their employment affected and 47% of current employment in the US is at high risk of computerization through the emergence of artificial intelligence.

On a broader scale, those jobs with the highest employment numbers in the US have proportionally the highest displacement rates. Reflecting this, initiatives must involve supporting workers without college degrees because they are most affected by the change.

As technology evolves, there is a "growing skills instability". As a result, it is anticipated that more than one-half of all employees will require significant retraining in coming years. To build a digital product, all workforces must come together to help the developers without direction and potentially without the skill.

Understanding new skills and change

Through the lens of LinkedIn gearing up for the next decade means improving soft skills such as creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability and emotional intelligence along with a set of technology focused hard skills.

Yet, planning for changes is a complex challenge: our societies represent systems of systems, where shifts in the workplace can yield complex societal effects beyond the obvious. A great example is the digitization of a prime everyday task - bank telling.

The introduction of ATMs surprisingly increased employment, but the traditional job changed and new roles evolved, which were customer-facing and involved skills as sales and customer service representatives. The lower cost of operation through the use of ATMs prompted more bank branches to open, which resulted in the employment of additional bank tellers.

Planning for change is difficult because shifts in the workplace can yield complex societal effects.

Three ways of achieving change

The right leadership: When economists are asked about setting the right environment for change, attention usually focuses on keeping total factor productivity high, but the tangible (hard skills and assets) and intangible (soft skills such as management practices) need to be considered equally by those seeking to build a successful organization. Overall findings emphasize that firms with structured management practices do a better job at hiring the "best people" and are also better able at keeping them over time. A study of MIT's initiative on the digital economy reveals that occupational leadership, physical and cooperation...