We Are Facing a Skills Revolution and Learnability Will Be the World's Great Equalizer in This Age of Acceleration

Digitization is set to increase jobs with 83% of employers intending to maintain or increase their headcount in the next two years[1]

News provided by

ManpowerGroup

Jan 16, 2017, 01:00 ET

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The future of work is bright according to ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) in its report "The Skills Revolution," a survey of 18,000 employers across all sectors in 43 countries, published today at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. One in five employers (19%) expect technological disruption to increase jobs as they adapt to the future of work and six in ten employers (64%) expect to maintain headcount if people have the right skills and are prepared to learn, apply and adapt.

Digitization is set to increase jobs with 83% of employers intending to maintain or increase their headcount in the next two years, according to a new report from ManpowerGroup.

Click the link to download The Skills Revolution: manpowergroup.com/workforce-insights/world-of-work/the-skills-revolution

New technologies will require increasingly specialist skills for people and organizations. Plenty has been written predicting the future: more jobs, different jobs, less jobs, even no jobs. Few are telling people that they will need new skills and they will need them more often to stay employable for jobs we may not even have heard of yet.

"In this Skills Revolution, learnability – the desire and ability to learn new skills to stay relevant and remain employable – will be the great equalizer," said Jonas Prising, ManpowerGroup Chairman & CEO. "The rise in populism and the polarization of the workforce continues to play out in front of our eyes. It's time to take immediate action to upskill and reskill employees to address the gaps between the Haves and the Have Nots – those that have the right skills and those that are at risk of being left behind. We also need to draw in those that are not fully participating in the workforce. That's what we mean by the emergence of a Skills Revolution."

Key findings of the report include:

Employers in Italy, Guatemala and Peru are most optimistic about the impact of robots on jobs. Over a quarter of employers in India expect to reduce headcount; Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia are close behind.
People in IT and customer-facing roles should feel optimistic, those employers anticipate greatest increases in headcount.
Rapid growth in demand is also expected across almost all industries and geographies^² for data analysts required to make sense of big data. In HR too, headcount is set to increase in the short-term as they steer companies through this period of adjustment.

Prising leads ManpowerGroup's delegation to the WEF Annual Meeting January 17-20, 2017. This includes Mara Swan, Executive Vice President, Global Strategy and Talent; Stefano Scabbio, President Mediterranean and Eastern Europe; and Alain Roumilhac, President of ManpowerGroup France. ManpowerGroup will be leading and participating in a number of high profile panel events on topics including: shaping the future of education and skills, how corporate culture can attract and retain millennials, women's economic empowerment, technology's impact on the workforce, the future of Artificial Intelligence and shaping the future of gender equality.

Prising is the Steward of the Future of Education, Gender and Work Global System and Co-Chairs the World Economic Forum Regional Business Council on Europe and the Digital Transformation of Industries for the Professional Services Industry. Swan is a member of the Future of Education, Gender and Work Global System and an expert on gender parity.

To learn more about ManpowerGroup's engagement with the WEF Annual Meeting, visit manpowergroup.com/wef2017

About ManpowerGroup

ManpowerGroup® (NYSE: MAN) is the world's workforce expert, creating innovative workforce solutions for nearly 70 years. We connect more than 600,000 people to meaningful work across a wide range of skills and industries every day. Through our ManpowerGroup family of brands - Manpower®, Experis®, Right Management® and ManpowerGroup® Solutions - we help more than 400,000 clients in 80 countries and territories address their critical talent needs, providing comprehensive solutions to resource, manage and develop talent. In 2016, ManpowerGroup was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the sixth consecutive year and one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies, confirming our position as the most trusted and admired brand in the industry. See how ManpowerGroup makes powering the world of work humanly possible: www.manpowergroup.com.

^¹ ManpowerGroup, 64% employers plan to maintain headcount, 19% plan to increase headcount
^² http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FOJ_Executive_Summary_Jobs.pdf

SOURCE ManpowerGroup