The future is digital. This means that employees’ skills will also need to be digital, sooner or later. CEOs in Switzerland and around the world have recognised this. As a result, upskilling is moving up the agenda of CEOs. When it comes to upskilling, company executives in Switzerland need to do one thing above all else: change the way they think.
We CEOs have to make decisions every day. To do this, we like to take a bird’s eye view so we can see and understand the whole picture. This is precisely the view that we’ve captured in our global “23rd Annual CEO Survey”.
From a minor issue to a top priority
For me personally, upskilling – one of the main focus areas of the survey – is a special concern. After all, the right (digital) skills will secure a company’s innovation and growth and with that its future. The survey shows that 69% of my Swiss colleagues are somewhat or extremely concerned about the lack of core competencies. They rank this as the fourth biggest threat to their company’s growth prospects, just behind over-regulation, trade conflicts and cyberspace threats.
Swiss CEOs rightly consider staff training to be an important element of healthy corporate development. After all, upskilling promotes greater innovative strength and higher productivity, so it’s not just the company that benefits, so do the employees, the economy and society as a whole.
Most Swiss CEOs have launched an upskilling programme or are in the process of creating one. Despite this, the implementation of upskilling programmes in Switzerland is slower than it is worldwide. Only one in ten companies in Switzerland is able to report significant progress. For most Swiss decision-makers, the biggest challenge is the definition of future roles and what essential core skills will be needed for the future. This is followed by motivation and incentives, on a par with the allocation of financial resources, manpower, time and expertise.
“Upskilling promotes greater innovative strength and higher productivity, so it’s not just the company that benefits, so do the employees, the economy and society as a whole”.
Combining function and intuition
Today, it’s standard practice to keep companies at the forefront of technology. Enhancing the employees’ digital skills is not yet given the same attention. But this is becoming more and more a question of survival: technological progress and staff training are just as important. No matter how intelligent a computer is, it lacks the human powers of reasoning and judgement. Ultimately, users will only be able to manage processes faster, interpret data better, carry out controls in a more targeted manner, assess risks correctly, identify optimisation potential and create added informational value from findings if they understand the new technologies and can use them appropriately.
Keeping an eye on the big picture
CEOs around the world attach the same importance and urgency to upskilling as their Swiss counterparts do. Most global CEOs are also positive about the impact of technology on their daily work.
But our survey revealed that there’s a great deal of general uncertainty as to how companies themselves will develop. There’s a clear correlation between confidence in a company’s success and progress in upskilling: 34% of global CEOs with well-developed upskilling programmes forecast an improvement in global economic growth over the next 12 months. Only 15% of the survey respondents whose upskilling programmes are still in the early stages are equally optimistic. Bob Moritz, our Global Chairman, commented, “In the long term, all companies will need to pursue upskilling in some form or another.”
“Instead of worrying about a lack of core competencies, CEO’s should promote training their employees and develop skills that are relevant for the future”.
In ten years, one third of jobs will be different
New technologies are changing employment profiles and jobs at a breathtaking pace. Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, expects the leading economies to create 133 million new jobs over the next two years to meet the demands of the 4.0 era. According to an estimate by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, one billion jobs, or almost one third of all jobs worldwide, will undergo fundamental change in the next ten years. In other words, we’ll need to retrain more than one billion people around the globe over the next ten years. Zahidi is absolutely right, “We need a worldwide reskilling revolution!”
To remain successful in the long run, companies need more than just high-tech and scientific expertise. The demand for new types of work is growing, which should promote interaction across companies so as to create new forms of collaboration and to foster creativity and innovation. This requires strong leadership and the translation of feedback into measurable change. Employees trust managers who show them the way into the future. To do that, we need to take bold action. And we need to understand the direction in which our employees wish to develop, what motivates them and how we can empower them.
Conclusion
The targeted upskilling of employees is one of the catalysts for growth and success in business and society. To meet the complex requirements of the new world, there’s a need for both digital skills and soft skills. It’s not without reason that successful companies cultivate strong values and focus on professional and social diversity.
From my own experience, I’d like to advise my Swiss colleagues to consider upskilling as an urgent matter. Instead of worrying about a lack of core competencies, they should promote training their employees in areas of basic digital knowledge and develop skills that are relevant for the future. To do this, companies will also need to establish a constructive feedback culture as well as lifelong learning. Because the future will be digital – but it will belong to people, not machines.
