Soft skills will be increasingly important in the future of work

Over the course of history, human labour has been replaced by technological solutions over and over again. This development can be thought of as certain transitions.

“In the agricultural revolution, a large proportion of the population did manual labour in various agricultural tasks. Technology started to evolve gradually, which lead to the industrial revolution. At that time, machines started to replace human labour, and a larger part of the population shifted from agriculture to factory work. Then technology evolved again, and it was discovered that it is in many ways more profitable to replace people with machines in manufacturing as well. Unlike machines, people tend to make mistakes, they take breaks and have to be paid”, lists non-fiction writer Perttu Pölönen.

The proliferation of machines in factory work led to the next transition, which Pölönen calls the information revolution.

“The information revolution means that most professions revolve around using and managing information. This is our current situation.”

History repeats itself

Language is a means of storing and sharing information and a way to be understood. Humans have mastered the use of language for thousands of years, and it has separated us from other living creatures.

“But the emergence of AI has resulted in us no longer being the only ones who generate, understand and use language. In fact, compared to people, AI is already much more adept in mastering different languages of the world. In addition, an AI’s vocabulary broader than that of any individual person”, Pölönen points out.

In other words, what we will read, listen to and watch in the future will be influenced not only by people but also by artificial intelligence. With this development, history will repeat itself: technology will replace human competence once more.

“The prerequisites for developing AI are good. AI will increase efficiency and speed things up. Still, it is essential that we consider what the things are that we want AI to make more efficient and faster in the future. In my opinion, no-one has a clear vision of that at the moment.”

The next revolution and the skills of the future

Perttu Pölönen suspects that the next transition could be some kind of revolution of humanity.

“The course of history has been as follows: at first, farms and factories needed manpower, but then machines replaced people, who moved on to office work where they had to use their intelligence instead of physical strength. At the moment, AI is replacing human intelligence, and as a result, we are moving away from offices to a new way of working, possibly some kind of hybrid work. But computers, AI and algorithms have no personality. They don’t look you in the eye. So, that human side – which people possess and computers do not – may become increasingly important in the work of the future.”

Pölönen thinks that important skills that we should invest in for the future include being present, having compassion and being creative.

“But these kinds of soft skills tend to be invisible. Employers may find it challenging to measure job seekers’ talents when it comes to these kinds of skills. In any case, one thing employers might ask in future job interviews is ‘What can you give me that an algorithm or computer cannot?’”

Learning is another important skill in the changing world of work. Pölönen believes that we are moving away from learning for the sake of retaining information for the future, and towards learning where people seek out information when necessary. This is because, nowadays, it is easy to find information when you need it.

“In addition, there is probably no future work where you always do the same things in the same way and in the same order. We will no longer have the same kind of control over our work, and we won’t necessarily know in advance what will happen. This means less security and an increasing number of changes. On the other hand, it also means more freedom. In fact, adaptability and being excited about the future may be characteristics that employers will value in job seekers instead of just looking at their CVs.”

Pölönen notes that the question we frequently pose to children “What will you be when you grow up?” will be even more meaningless in the future, considering that no-one could have said in the 70s that search engine optimisation is their passion. In the future, recognising the direction the world is moving professionally is more essential than precisely defined occupational titles.

Perttu Pölönen talked about the future of work at the SHIFT recruitment day at Visitor and Innovation Centre Joki in Turku on 7 February.