What the future of work may look like

The ability for companies to harness growth potential relating to new processes and technological adoption is hindered by skills shortages across all sectors globally. These skills gaps and the inability to attract the right talent remain among the leading barriers to the adoption of new technologies and processes. This is particularly true for those who are employed in the built environment sector as we are seeing high number of people either leave the industry or pivot into other industries with their digital skills, all fueled by the inability for the construction market to adopt innovation. Crucial findings are documented in the Future of Jobs report, published in 2020 by the World Economic forum, which is a research summary of the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change across all sectors. It aims to shed light on the pandemic-related disruptions in 2020, contextualized within a longer history of economic cycles and the expected outlook for technology adoption, jobs and skills in the next five years. Some of the data suggests that across the majority of the countries covered in the report on average that over 62% of organisations and their people will require some form of upskilling or training, regardless of the field they work in. This also expanded in the research to a further 11% by 2025, highlighting the urgency of skills development and upskilling in technologies and processes relating to digital uptake across all sectors.

While it is impossible to predict exactly how the construction market will rebound in the wake of the coronavirus (or how it has so far), our company leaders can and should investigate ideas around the future of the skills required and the way we work to enable productivity and efficiencies in their organisations. The pandemic has taught us that we need to change our approach toward the way we deliver projects and the technologies used to do so. The construction industry will continue to grow in a pace that requires us to consider future learning and future skills. However, it is a critical issue in our sector that only 42% of employees take up any opportunity to reskill or upskill in their roles, only further highlighting the resistance to enable change across the built environment. This coupled with the inability to force people to be back in the office to engage in face to face activities is also proving an enormous challenge today.

At present there are still considerable challenges in finding skilled employees in digital construction or engineering (or even BIM) but even more so across a range of new, emerging roles in our industry. Organisations are consistently citing difficulties when hiring or finding the right talent and many are resorting to extreme measures to retain people with these skills. Emerging roles are beginning to populate the Construction sector, such as Data Analysts and Scientists, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Specialists as well as Software and Application Developers. As you can imagine, skills in these new emerging roles are even harder to source. While an exact skills match is not a prerequisite to making a job transition or even being employed, the long-term productivity of employees is determined by their skill of key competencies in these areas all of which are very difficult to procure.

Another consideration in addressing our skills shortages is how the pandemic has resulted in care activities for children and Women have been fundamentally pressured to either pull back from their current roles, or take a back step in their career. The United Nations Sustainability Goals were developed as a response to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which are to be adopted by all United Nations Member States. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-inhand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. These key goals are fundamentally behind in terms of their adoption due to the pandemic which has further provided an issue to the industries of our world.

If we look at Goal 5: Gender Equality, for example, gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. This goal is definitely one in which we must address, as the construction industry is currently challenged with a plethora of cultural issues coupled with gender pay gaps, which are only forcing women out of the industry. There is hope that with the evolution of digital roles in construction (and obviously the work we do for Women in BIM), more women will find digital a more appealing career of choice. In March 2021 a further report was published by the World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2021, analysing the data and impact of the last few years in regard to gender pay gaps. There is still a massive issue in all areas in this regard, and the progress hasn’t been promising.

If we shift the theme slightly now, there is also a consideration to be made when it comes to newer and innovative technologies. Many organisations are beginning to invest more heavily in innovative processes and techniques yet it is not currently mainstream in the construction sector. Much of the research suggests that new technologies are set to drive growth across industries, as well as to increase the demand for new job roles and skill sets. Such positive effects may be

Perceived barriers to the adoption of new technologies

counter-balanced by workforce disruptions. A substantial amount of literature has indicated that technological adoption will impact workers’ jobs by displacing some tasks performed by humans into the realm of work performed by machines. The extent of disruption will vary depending on a worker’s occupation and skill set. There is already a strong focus across large scale advisory organisations on automation, focusing on enabling menial tasks to be completed using automated techniques, and focusing on humans for the scope of leadership and innovation roles. We should also recognise that there are perceived barriers to the adoption of new technologies. We are not unfamiliar with this challenge, particularly in the built environment where technology adoption, coupled with variations in processes and standards have all hindered how we adopt digital solutions on our projects. As shown in future 26 below the perceived barriers to the adoption not only relate to skills gaps in the labor market, but also across leadership levels, which is a prime example of the limitations some organisations have in terms of the adoption of Building Information

Modelling (BIM) or Digital Engineering.

As noted above, primal human qualities and skills will be required to support how we interact with technologies and the strategies around implementing them in our organisations.

On top of the issues relating to the way we adopt new technologies, there should also be an understanding internally within our organizations as to what skills are required. You will see by the diagram noted here in the report that the top 15 skills are not only relative to advanced digital process, but rather for analytical thinking, active learning and leadership amongst a few in the top 10 skills required. This type of data can be used as a framework for how organisations develop a data driven approach to skills measurement and upskilling which is now somewhat unfamiliar in the context of the construction industry. Wait and see is generally what we hear, when many organisations are in some ways moving too far ahead in adopting complex digital solutions which are not practical or human and therefore not appealing to people.

The pandemic, technology progress, and ways of working all are fundamentally impacting on how we learn, what we learn and the ways in which these new skills are being perceived and required by the Construction Industry. If there is anything to take away from the last 3 years it is that we can never predict what is about to come to us, we can only try to keep up with innovative solutions to allow for our organisations and people to feel inspired. Individuals do not retain their loyalty to organizations due to wanting to upskill, they will stay if they are required, if they are celebrated and of course, if they are rewarded. The only way to achieve this is to provide an avenue for career growth, fueled by process, technology adoption and change. It is a challenge to keep up with all of these challenges, yet we now have the opportunity as an industry to change, to grow and to constantly innovate, which we should have been doing for some time already.