A survey report by World Economic Forum (WEF) on future jobs in 2018 indicates that new technologies, including automation and algorithms, do create new high-quality jobs and vastly improve the job quality and productivity of the existing work of human employees. Though mobile internet, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud technology are dominating trends and drivers for business growth. As has been the case throughout economic history, such augmentation of existing jobs through technology is expected to create wholly new tasks—from app development to piloting drones to remotely monitoring patient health to certified care workers—opening opportunities for an entirely diverse livelihood for workers. Concurrently, however, it is also clear the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s wave of technological advancement is set to reduce numbers of workers required for certain work tasks. From the same report, analysis finds that increased demand for new roles will offset the decreasing demand for others. However, these net gains are not a foregone conclusion. They entail difficult transitions for millions of workers and the need for proactive investment in developing a new surge of agile learners and skilled talent globally. Substitutability between labour andmachinery rises with every new technological wave – will capital investments replace jobs? After many reiterations of industrial evolution, we know now it replaces some jobs and creates others. Demand is growing for transferable, higher-order cognitive skills in all regions – skills like logic, critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and reasoning. There are 4 million app developers in India, and China has 100,000 data labellers. The job requires strong language skills and critical thinking skills, jobs that didn’t exist before 2014. To prevent an undesirable lose-lose scenario—a technological change accompaniedby talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality—It is critical that Malaysian businesses take an active role in supporting their existing workforces through reskilling and upskilling, and workers take a proactive approach to their own lifelong learning and the Government to create an enabling environment, rapidly and creatively, to assist in these efforts.
A WEF survey also found that in which applicable to scenarios in Malaysia, to date, many employers’ retraining and upskilling efforts remain focused on a narrow set of current, highly skilled, highly valued employees. However, to truly rise to the challenge of formulating a winning workforce strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Malaysian businesses will need to recognise human capital investment as an asset rather than a liability. This is particularly imperative because there is a virtuous cycle between new technologies and upskilling. New technology adoption drives business growth, new job creation and augmentation of existing jobs, provided it can fully leverage the talents of a motivated and agile workforce who are equipped with futureproof skills to take advantage of new opportunities through continuous retraining and upskilling. Conversely, skills gaps—both among workers and among an organisation’s senior leadership—may significantly hamper new technology adoption and therefore business growth.
THE SURVEY
38% of respondents agree that finding workers with skill/experience inemergingareas suchas IoT, ARandAI are among top hiring challenges and followed by rising salary expectation from new entrants. Similarly, soft skills continue to be an issue with 21% of respondents facing this, while a limited pool of available workers with the right skills-set in this region has worsened the hiring issues. HIRING CHALLENGES 38% 21% Finding workers with skill/experience in emerging areas Finding workers with soft skill
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Malaysian Technology Strategic Outlook 2019/2020 Intergration of High Technology
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