How to Prepare for Your Future Workplace — Build Your Career Capital

Now is the time to prepare for your future workplace, since we are amid the transformative impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, in five years, more than one-third of the skills crucial for today's workforce will be different. With the fast pace of technological innovation, most of us will soon share our workplaces with artificial intelligence and bots.

So, how can you get ahead and stay ahead of the curve? Adopt a commitment to lifelong learning to build your career capital to succeed in your future workplace.

Career Capital

Your opportunities to learn is an excellent barometer for determining whether it is worth staying in any job. Learning is how you build your talent stack — skills, knowledge, wisdom, performance traits, and accomplishments. Your talent stack is your career capital. Think of your salary as your return on career capital. Think of the learning at the organization as a dividend. Knowledge increases your career capital. It is yours to take with you. I encourage you to take full advantage of every opportunity.

In our lifetime, the half-life of skills, on average, dropped from 30 years to 6 years. For this reason, it is time for all of us to begin getting skills that will make us treasured resources in the future workplace. So, what skill is the first one you plan to tackle?

Technology skills

Modern technological innovations including artificial intelligence, big data, virtual reality, and blockchain are fueling the 4th industrial revolution. This trend means that we all will need a certain level of comfort around technology. At the most basic level, we will be required to access data and determine how to act on it. This ability requires some technical skills. However, on a more fundamental level, everyone needs to be able to understand the potential impact of innovative technologies on their industry, business, and job.

“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.” — Shelley Turkle

Principles of Technological Stewardship.

The rate of change in technology has passed the rate of change of human adaptability. Just because we can build it, does not mean we should make it. Technological stewardship fosters technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.

It is essential to the technical community and professionals everywhere that the contributions of technology improve global conditions.

Learning how to apply the principles of technological stewardship will serve you well.

High-Performance Traits to Future-Proof Your Talent Stack

“A great career gives you an ever-increasing opportunity to learn more. Even if you are not looking to change your role, knowledge has to be improved, challenged and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” — Peter Drucker

High performers in a role share a standard set of performance traits. We have benchmarks for over 500 of the most valued roles. We measure your level of strength with 85 traits and 40 career themes and compare them to high performers. You will have some strengths — these are your superpowers — and some challenges for the role. Success requires the complete set of traits for the position. So, you use your strengths and manage your challenges. Fulfillment happens when we are using our superpowers to achieve something meaningful to us.

Here are the top performance traits required for your future workplace. It is best if you know which ones are your strengths and the challenges that you will need to manage.

Creativity

Today, a point often overlooked is that robots cannot compete with us on creativity. To fully realize all the benefits of the new things in the future — new ways of working, technologies, and products — we need to be creative in the future. Your future workplace will demand new ways of thinking. Moreover, human creativity is the key to it.

Emotional intelligence (EQ)

An individual’s ability to be aware of, control, and express their own emotions as well as being aware of the feelings of others describes their emotional intelligence. You show high emotional intelligence if you have empathy, integrity and work well with others. A machine cannot easily replace our ability to connect with another human being, so those who have high EQs will be in demand.

Critical thinking

An individual’s critical thinking solves complex problems using reasoning and logic to evaluate arguments. They can suggest innovative solutions and ideas. Notably, their first step in critical thinking is analyzing information from various resources. Moreover, someone who is an excellent analytical thinker relies on logical reasoning rather than emotion. They collect the pros and cons of a situation. Equally important, they are open-minded to the best possible solution. People with analytic thinking strengths will be needed to navigate the human/machine division of labour.

A growth mindset and active learning

In the future, everyone needs to learn and grow actively. An individual with a growth mindset understands that they can develop their abilities and intelligence. Moreover, they know that their effort to build skills will result in higher achievement. Therefore, they will take on challenges, learn from mistakes and actively seek new knowledge.

Judgment and decision making

Human decision-making will become more complicated in future workplaces. Machines will process information and provide insights that would be impossible for people to gather. Moreover, a human will need to make the decision recognizing the broader implications of the decision. They might have on other areas of business, personnel and the effect on different additional human sensibilities such as ethics and morale. However, as technology takes away more menial and mundane tasks, we must take on the higher-level decision-making.

As an example, we provide the Ai-Auditor to the audit and internal audit communities. Ai will not replace auditors, auditors using Ai will replace the ones who do not use it. To prepare for the of a small firm, today auditors take about 30 hours to prepare the data. They then audit three percent of the transactions. Using Ai, it takes about 15 minutes. Moreover, the AI-Auditor risk ranks 100 percent of transactions. This automation frees up 30 hours of time per engagement for auditors to add more value.

Interpersonal communication

An ability to exchange information and meaning between people is a vital skill during the 4th industrial revolution. It is critical to realize, that people should hone their ability to communicate effectively with other human beings. To put it another way, they need to be able to say the right things, use the right body language and tone of voice, to bring their messages across.

Leadership

Traits you associate with effective leadership include being inspiring and helping others become the best versions of themselves. These attributes are necessary for the future workforce. Interestingly, today’s typical organizational chart might not be as prevalent. We will see individuals taking on leadership roles on project teams or work with other employees to tackle issues and develop solutions.

Culture and diversity

Over time, the world and our workplaces will be more diverse and open. Moreover, it is vital that individuals have the skills to understand, respect and work with others. Regardless of the differences in gender, race, age, culture, sexual orientation, language, political or religious beliefs, etc. An ability to understand and adapt to others who might have diverse ways of perceiving things improves how people interact within an organization. Moreover, it makes the organization’s products and services more inclusive and prosperous.

Embracing change

Individuals will need to embrace change and be agile, given the rate of transformation in your future workplace. As we adjust to shifting workplaces, our expectations, skills, mindset needs to be flexible, for us to be adaptable. Furthermore, an essential skill during the 4th industrial revolution will be the ability to see change as an opportunity to innovate and grow rather than a burden.

Concluding Thoughts

In finance, diversification reduces risk by distributing investments among various instruments, industries, and other categories. We look to maximize returns by investing in different areas that would each react differently to the same event.

“By diversifying, you're making sure you don't put all your eggs in one basket.”

For this reason, most investment professionals agree that, although it does not guarantee against loss, diversification is a critical part of reaching long-range financial goals while minimizing risk.

“Instead of striving to use your strengths more often, aim to use them more wisely.” — Adam Grant

Building your career capital can also reduce risks. You want to lead with your strongest asset — your high-performance traits and manage the risk areas. However, as the adage goes — there is a time and place for everything. So, it is essential that you use situational strengths — learn to apply your strengths wisely.