Work trends have rapidly changed across the world, post-pandemic. How and where people choose to work now or in the future is and will be radically different from how it used to be a few years ago.

Labour markets across all sectors have undergone drastic shifts in terms of talent requirements and demands, as businesses across the board increasingly accelerate the adoption of automation and emerging technologies.

This has resulted in a growing skills scarcity across the globe. As more technical and digital skills are required by workers in order to master emerging technologies, many organisations risk being left behind due to an undereducated and underprepared workforce.

Businesses need to take the required steps now towards ensuring that their workforce, both present and future, has the training and digital skills needed to thrive in the working environment set to emerge over the next decade.

The World Economic Forum estimates 150 million new technology jobs created globally over the next five years, with over three-quarters of all jobs set to require digital skills from workers by 2030. Right now, only a third of technology jobs worldwide are filled by the necessary skilled labour.

From a business perspective, this means the talent pool is severely diluted – for each skilled worker, there are two other unskilled, unequipped ones. And it’s clear that, without reskilling and better preparing the workforce with the new digital and technology skills demanded by this changing job market, many workers risk long-term unemployment.

One thing is for sure, for those businesses looking to what the future holds: without rapidly changing the ways in which we reskill and upskill workers, this mass of untapped potential will only continue to grow as more new technologies emerge.

As more innovative technologies emerge, the strongest and most employable candidates for businesses are not necessarily the most intelligent ones, but those most responsive to change.

These candidates are not reactive or aversive, but rather responsive and receptive when it comes to adopting new skills and overcoming new challenges. The new normal of business will be fuelled by exponential advancements in new and emerging technologies, as we seek to refine the way work is done and make operations more efficient and effective.

Change will constantly come, unabated. When we talk about preparing the workforce with the digital and technology skills required for ‘the future of work’, we are not talking about the potential needs of the global labour market in 2030, we are talking about an urgent need that clearly already exists.

Businesses must act now, or risk becoming rapidly irrelevant. History will look back on the Covid-19 pandemic as both a global health crisis and a turning point in how we work.

Businesses worldwide responded to lockdowns by accelerating digitalisation and the adoption of technologies such as internet of things devices, virtual presences, artificial intelligence, automation and immersive experiences.

Resulting, in many cases, in a much-needed disruption of established industries, with a hugely positive democratisation of finance, education, job training and even human capital and talent sourcing.

Rehan Haque is CEO of metatalent.ai

Staff and companies must be ready for rapidly-changing world of work: Rehan Haque