It feels to me that the labor market and the skills landscape are changing faster than we anticipated, with the number of stories are trends emerging in 2021.  Paul Graham, the startup genius who funded Airbnb, Dropbox, and several other companies, said this in a high school speech a few years back:

“ It might seem that nothing would be easier than deciding what you like, but it turns out to be hard, because it is hard to get an accurate picture of most of the jobs , most of the work I have done in the last ten years did not exist when I was in high school.”

This is such a powerful quote, not just for the high school students but also for HR trying to figure out skills and competencies that are relevant.  Contrary to the conventional wisdom of doing long-range planning in Strategic Workforce Planning, the goal should be to have flexible job architectures and processes to adapt rapidly.

The year 2021 is generating some fascinating stories already when it comes to the labor and skills market. The first shipment of the Mac Pro computers built at the Northwest Austin facility were shipped out in December 2020.  This is a significant milestone for the company and, more importantly, to Skills evolution and automation at work.

Let us look at a few stories

• Virtual Career Fairs getting specialized:  Virtual Career Fairs are on the rise as expected but what is interesting in 2021 is the specialized fairs.  For example, the Northern Virginia Cyber and Cloud Career fair targets Cloud Security Professionals.  This specialization helps companies get in house experts to be in the virtual booth to give a very good context of what they do and attract candidates 
• Changes in South East Asia are becoming more evident and obvious.  Sony Interactive Entertainment, which manages the Southeast Asia market out of its office in Hong Kong, recently started its Asia Hub operations to Singapore, bringing one of the world’s leading gaming brands physically closer to gamers in the region. The Asia market, excluding Japan, has been split into two – Asia East covering Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, and Asia West, covering SEA markets including Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. (many companies will more likely adopt this Asia East and Asia West concept) 
• Non Executives Boards:  What companies are truly getting out of the boards is an age-old question, but the movement towards having Digital Advisory Boards with non-executives is on the rise.  Very recently, BT said it has set up a non-executive Technology Advisory Board (TAB) to provide “provide insight, provocation and external perspective to the Executive Committee on emerging technologies, market and societal trends.” 
• A new function from Wells Fargo that may be replicated:  Wells Fargo is establishing a new division that will oversee the bank’s interactions with consumers — everything from providing advice on how products are priced to reviewing complaint data. Michael Lipsitz will lead the Office of Consumer Practices.  Lipsitz, who reports to Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell, will head up a small team of senior bank employees charged with ensuring that the perspective of consumers plays a significant role in decision-making. The office’s work will be focused on two consumer-facing business units: Consumer Lending and Consumer and Small Business Banking.  Even though Wells Fargo is doing this due to the crisis they faced in reporting accounts in 2016, this is an excellent oversight that many industries may adopt.  (this is an essential role towards making the organization customer-centric) 
• Many open platforms are emerging to teach the basics of Digital.  Open P-TECH is a digital learning platform, and it is available to anyone. P-TECH is an education model for the brick and mortar schools across the world.  Such platforms will be useful for companies to get the basics of Digital at no or low cost. 

To compete and excel, it is not enough to understand what skills we procure and develop.  We should also understand what should change in HR that leads the initiatives. As a result, we have started significant research in this area.  

Overall, we are quite excited about the role HR can play under the emerging circumstances.  If we plan the initiatives correctly, we can accelerate transformation and adaptation and make the enterprises that we genuinely care for a great place to work.