Gone are the days of choosing a profession as a teenager, and progressing through that single career path until retirement. Digitisation of the workplace means that the jobs that are around today may not be around forever. People need to continually adapt and evolve their skills, if they want to remain employable and successful. And it’s important that employers support and encourage this too, to ensure they continue to have a right-skilled workforce.

With this in mind, the defining challenge that faces leaders is this: how do we help workers to futureproof themselves in a changing world of work? We need to create clear career paths from education to employment, to help people move from this job to the next. We need accelerated reskilling programmes, with faster, shorter bursts of on-the-job, experiential training. And we must shift more people from declining to growth industries – turning textile workers into composite materials technicians, coal miners into coders, and more.

This was the topic of conversation at the Fireside Challenge event that ManpowerGroup hosted at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting earlier this year. Our Chairman and CEO Jonas Prising was joined by tech entrepreneur will.i.am. Together, they explored how businesses can develop the skills they need. Watch this short video to see some of the highlights from the discussion:

We cannot slow the rate of technological advance. However, we can invest in employees’ skills to increase the resilience of both people and organisations. With the right skills mix, people will augment – rather than compete – with technology. Businesses have a critical role to play in empowering their workforce to succeed.

Download our whitepaper Robots Need Not Apply: Human Solutions in the Skills Revolution to learn more.