After having completed an important program that focused on employability post-digitalisation, I was looking around to see the trend and find myself in the middle of nowhere.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, retired from the Chinese e-commerce giant in September to focus on education, which he calls the “most important and critical issue” of our time. His concern: the world is changing fast, but education is not.
The speed of change is so fast that the not only children and students need to receive an education that will support them to live a flourishing life, but also the current workforce need to be retrained to embrace the coming challenges.
Technologies did favour the globalisation with, as a consequence, to make time and space disappear. The organisations and the individuals experience difficulties in adapting to the new paradigm. John Kotter has documented in his books the difficulties that companies are experiencing when called to change and Robert Kegan has documented in his book “Immunity to change” the difficulties that individuals are experiencing when exposed to change. Kegan speaks of people affected by a lungs’ cancer who are unable to quit smoking. Changing is far from being obvious for organisations and individuals
What will be the consequence of more technologies? What will be the outcome of the digitalisation trend?
I’m not saying here that technology and digitalisation are bad per se, but pertinent reflexions on organisation forms and the future of work are necessary to give a chance to organisation and individual to adapt. It’s all about employability…
Employability may be seen as an employer’s or employee’s responsibility. In my view, It’s both. It’s necessary to create and share between employer and employees a common vision of the organisational forms and the future of work to give the parties a chance to be prepared.
Is it a dream to see each company investing in an employability program in partnership with its employees to design and build their (common) future? Change is not obvious when you know where to go; without a destination, it’s just impossible!
Xavier Bronlet
