Building Capabilities for Future of Work in the Gig Economy

Abstract

Many organisations are agile in their growth plans and scale up their operations to achieve exponential growth. The most valuable asset in today’s and tomorrow’s economy is human capital, and organisations invest in reskilling and upskilling their workforce. Automation at work, combined with the global economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic situation has lead the workforce to lose their jobs at an accelerated pace, and the trend is expected to continue. The ongoing shift in the division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms might displace almost 85 million jobs worldwide in the next 5 years, as per the World Economic Forum (WEF). The world of work is changing with a multi-generational workforce and changing employment models with more flexibility. The location is no more a constraint to acquire capable talent. The gig economy is booming, and today’s workers prefer to adopt the gig model, and employers are increasingly preferring gig workers to the permanent workforce and preferring skills and competencies over formal qualifications. A location-independent global workforce is also emerging, and the talent becomes more fungible across all the domains. As the labour market will be highly competitive in a few years, there is a need for employers to prepare their existing workforce for future-readiness. They need to upskill them with a new set of competencies. This study describes the initiative of a larger organisation that has identified a new set of competencies and set up an Academy of Future Skills to make their workforce future ready.