How technology will change APAC’s workforce

TECHNOLOGY will change the workforce as we know it.

Now, there are not only jobs but also business models and even economies that did not exist before technology became the disruptor that we talk about today.

In the next decade, digital solutions will enable both business and end users to experience work and life more purposefully.

After all, that is indeed the motive of any kind of technology – to bring the focus back to what matters.

So, the future workforce needs to be ready for and adaptable to these changes. Siemens Global Talent Acquisition Manager Stephanie Morton recently revealed that “[the company believes] in flexibility over permanency.”

What Morton said reflects how Siemens prioritizes enterprise technology for the company’s recruitment.

That is because technology is highly malleable and its rise will happen whether or not businesses expect it. Hiring managers, therefore, desperately need to reexamine the way they recruit if they have not already.

What’s technology’s bigger purpose?

As companies make the shift towards intelligent automation, candidates will also have to be equipped with the right digital know-how.

Technology-powered automation solutions can support every kind of job, from customer service and logistics to payroll and sales, freeing-up manpower for more relevant tasks.

As a result, businesses will have an opportunity to be more productive on the organic tasks that machines cannot replicate.

Therefore, the human workforce will have a higher value. This puts automation at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to the common perception of how it will displace human.

In the long run, higher value work will give businesses greater mobility to grow and develop.

What does it mean for APAC businesses?

A recent MIT Technology Review found that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a major growth driver for Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the next 10 years.

Businesses, therefore, are expected to become more mobile with the deployment of AI.

Further, high-income economies will experience more changes in the workforce as knowledge worker sectors are more affected by AI. Which means, these economies will have a greater capacity to reskill workers to prepare them for a future that is technologically-integrated.

As the speed and scale disrupt businesses, the mode of employment will favor the gig economy where flexibility rules over permanency in the APAC.

The MIT report also writes that “jobs for life will cease to exist, just as lifelong learning becomes a permanent fixture of education systems.”

The full potential of technology is unknown but it will certainly make the future of work more mobile than ever before.

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