Hi-tech skill set, flexible hours must for modern workplace

LAHORE: In this age of globalisation, entrepreneurs in Pakistan cannot ignore the growing global trend of flexible working hours and the production of goods and services in a seamless collaboration with all the stakeholders.

Our private sector should realise that the next wave of growth will not come through unskilled or low-skilled production. Time is not far when even the most established domestic companies commanding share in the local market would be threatened by more sophisticated imported products at lower rates than their inferior products. They will need highly skilled talent that is likely to remain in short supply even in the long term in Pakistan.

The highly skilled talent would be provided by those, who were either born in the last decade of 20th century or at the start of this century --and are most likely to have a high level skill set by 2025.

This youth would not be different from the youth in the developed and most emerging economies.  The skills that really matter to boost productivity and efficiency would be embedded in the modern technology. The new technologically advanced workforce would not be willing to work with firms that observe rigid working hours. With the employment of technology, these skilled workers would be able to produce much more and more efficiently in a day than the low-skilled workforce of today. The highly skilled workers like their counterparts in the developed economies would like to be rewarded on the basis of results and productivity levels, rather than the hours worked.

Technology has made it much easier to work from almost anywhere. To them, personal development and striking a balance between work and life are more important than earning a lot of money as they know they would be compensated adequately for their high skills anyway. 

According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) study titled “Millenials At Work”, businesses are competing fiercely for the best available workers and for the talent that will replace the retiring generation (born approximately between the years 1946 and 1964) in the coming few years. The new technologically savvy generation is firmly committed to personal learning and development. Unlike the older working generation that seldom bothered to upgrade its skills, the highly educated technical workforce of the day does not want to be left behind their peers in information, knowledge and learning.

This workforce would be even in developed economies. In fact creditable research by various institutions has projected that by 2030 almost 30 percent of the technical jobs in developed world would remain unfilled. 

The increased prevalence of digital technology and artificial intelligence will lead to new job functions and categories—but also to the shortage of people with the skills needed to fill those roles.

A report by “The Boston Consulting Group” says that many companies will need to focus more on developing digital skills among their current workers or identifying and recruiting potential new hires. In addition, companies will need digital bridge builders: intermediaries between employees with specialised digital talent and those in non tech roles, the report added.

The PwC in its report also said that technology has changed how and where we work, making it much easier to operate from almost anywhere, provided you have a laptop and an internet connection.

The high tech force that would remain short for a while would be providing services to various companies from their laptops or smartphones. In fact technological advancement has ensured that even the most skilled person is available 24/7 in emergencies through internet to many companies.

Of course charges for his services in odd hours would be higher. Alternately, if a company wants to retain a highly skilled person it would have to pay him/her according to his technological capacity to earn from various sources.

The price in most cases would be exorbitant and most companies would have to allow flexibility to their high skilled technical workers.

It is worth noting that highly successful and creative technology companies like Google, have allowed their employees to have flexible working hours. These companies evaluate their productivity with respect to their output and not hours spent and attendance. Pakistani workers are still subjected to rigid working hours but the trend is changing rapidly in the United States, where according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around a third of workers perform some or all of their work from home.

The latest stats support the flexibility of work concept as currently 2.5 quintillion bytes data is generated every day; and 2020 global population of 7.6 billion would be using 11.6 billion mobile devices.

Experts predict that by 2020 freelancers would constitute 50 percent of the global workforce. It is just a matter of time when the role of ‘the organisation’ will shift from that of a controller of resources to that of a facilitator of ecosystems or rather a  conduit for realising individual aspirations.