Recruiters and CEOs reveal the skills all Australian workers are going to need

In a rapidly changing world, workers are going to need a new suite of skills to survive. Here’s what you must learn – soon.

Data literacy, coding, collaboration and innovative thinking – these are the skills Australians will need if they want to land a job in 2030.

As the Covid-19 pandemic speeds up an already fast-evolving jobs market, experts suggest workers and school leavers be strategic about the skills they prioritise if they wish to remain competitive.

RMIT Online chief executive Helen Souness said the “killer combination of the future” would be a mix of both hard technical skills and soft transferable skills.

“Transferable skills will be humans’ competitive advantage over the machines,” she said.

DATA ANALYSIS

Companies across all sectors are moving away from experienced-based decisions and toward data-based decisions, making analysis a necessary skill in professions from marketing, sales and customer service through to project management, according to Ms Souness.

“Professionals of all levels are already feeling the need to invest in their data skills – the enrolments in RMIT Online Business Analytics courses, for example, grew 30 per cent in the past year,” she said.

RMIT Online’s Helen Souness says data analysis skills will be needed in a wide range of professions. Picture: Supplied

Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia managing director Annette Slunjski said data literacy would be an assumed skill for everyone in the future – “every single job from receptionist to CEO – and everything in between”.

“It used to be ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’, it’s going to be ‘reading, writing, arithmetic and data’,” she said.

Ms Slunjski said there was also growing demand for dedicated data professionals.

She said job titles varied but they essentially fell into three groups – data analysts who understood business problems and put data into context; data scientists who dealt with advanced analytics, such as machine learning and predictive models, and data engineers who were concerned with data quality, access and ethics.

CODING

Between 2020 and 2025, the National Skills Commission forecasts an extra 46,000 software and application programmers will be needed in Australia – a 30 per cent increase over the five years.

But Ms Souness said as more tasks were digitised, coding would be needed in most jobs, not only specialised coding jobs.

“Although the level of knowledge the average worker will need to have and which coding

languages will dominate are open to debate, coding skills will be essential to allow professionals to understand how the technology around them works,” she said.

It’s never too early to become familiar with a coding language. Picture: iStock

Robotic process automation company UiPath director of global services Luke Kelly said new “low-code” and “no-code” tech tools – such as phone apps and those with drag-and-drop interfaces – allowed non-programmers to do some of the work previously reserved for programmers, but this was increasing not decreasing the need for this skill set.

“There is absolutely still a need now, and for the foreseeable future for highly skilled programmers to write complex code powering some of the most advanced technology on the planet,” Mr Kelly said.

“There won’t necessarily be a raft of new roles, instead existing roles such as analysts, project managers, administrative or executive assistants, and many more, may increasingly be required to develop some level of competency for these low or no-code based tools.”

UiPath has partnered with technology training company WithYouWithMe to upskill ex-military personnel in high level coding via UiPath Studio, low-code via UiPath Studio X, and no-code via UiPath Assistant.

WYWM chief executive Tom Moore said the “ever-widening digital skills gap” could be solved by empowering under-represented communities with these future skills.

“Allowing veterans to access our programs for free enhances the employability prospects post their service and provides tangible benefits to the economy through the provision of effective training and digital skills,” he said.

WithYouWithMe’s Tom Moore says the skills gap is widening in highly technical fields. Picture: Supplied

COLLABORATION – WITH HUMANS & MACHINES

As artificial intelligence and machine learning become more common in workplaces, employees will need to collaborate with machines.

Recruitment firm Robert Half director Nicole Gorton said there were three types of job requiring this skill.

“Firstly, those that oversee the implementation and management of new technology, for example training machine-learning algorithms or chat bots,” she said.

“Secondly, specialist roles that leverage emerging technology to improve an existing process, for example HR managers automating their employee engagement program or retailers automating their warehouse processing.

“Finally, those that overlay ‘human’ insight to extract analysis and strategies from the technology, such as marketing automation specialists, who interpret data to understand customer behaviour, or financial planning and analysis managers, who transform complex data into evolving financial forecasts and budgets.”

Workers will increasingly need to collaborate with machines. Picture: iStock

Ms Souness said humans would increasingly use machines to amplify their cognitive strengths, to interact with other people to free up time for higher-level tasks, and to extend their physical capabilities – but humans-to-human collaboration would also be important.

“Remote work will likely lead to a global workforce requiring asynchronous collaboration across time zones,” she said.

“Labour market fragmentation will flatten companies hierarchies and lead to more freelance

work.

“These trends will increase the need for transferable skills such as leadership, social influence, flexibility and emotional intelligence.”

CREATIVITY & INNOVATION

The ability to come up with new ideas will give humans a competitive advantage over machines, according to Ms Souness.

“Although machines are already writing books and producing paintings, human imagination and general intelligence are extremely tough to reproduce,” she said.

Innovation will also set humans apart.

“While creativity is about generating original ideas, innovation is about implementing ideas in a new way,” she said.

Robert Half’s Nicole Gorton said creativity was important for professionals from marketing content managers to software developers. Picture: Supplied

“(It) is a collective endeavour …(so) innovation skills are best paired with a long list of transferable skills, including creativity, problem-solving, relationship building and communication skills.”

Ms Gorton predicted creativity and innovation would play a large role in how brands engage with audiences in the coming years.

“(They will employ) software developers, UX/UI (user experience/user interface) designers, marketing content managers, and web designers to create a unique (customer) experience,” she said.

Originally published as Recruiters and CEOs reveal the skills all Australian workers are going to need