Page 47 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution

all levels. Many of the traits and capabilities traditionally associated with

women and female professions will be much more needed in the era of the
fourth industrial revolution.

While we cannot predict the different impact on men and women that the
fourth industrial revolution will have, we should take the opportunity of a
transforming economy to redesign labour policies and business practices to
ensure that both men and women are empowered to their full extent.

In tomorrow’s world, many new positions and professions will emerge,

driven not only by the fourth industrial revolution, but also by non-
technological factors such as demographic pressures, geopolitical shifts and
new social and cultural norms. Today, we cannot foresee exactly what these
will be but I am convinced that talent, more than capital, will represent the
critical production factor. For this reason, scarcity of a skilled workforce

rather the availability of capital is more likely to be the crippling limit to
innovation, competiveness and growth.

This may give rise to a job market increasingly segregated into low-
skill/low-pay and high-skill/high-pay segments, or as author and Silicon
25
Valley software entrepreneur Martin Ford predicts, a hollowing out of the
entire base of the job skills pyramid, leading in turn to growing inequality
and an increase in social tensions unless we prepare for these changes
today.

Such pressures will also force us to reconsider what we mean by “high
skill” in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. Traditional
definitions of skilled labour rely on the presence of advanced or specialised

education and a set of defined capabilities within a profession or domain of
expertise. Given the increasing rate of change of technologies, the fourth
industrial revolution will demand and place more emphasis on the ability of

workers to adapt continuously and learn new skills and approaches within a
variety of contexts.

The Forum’s Future of Jobs study also showed that less than 50% of chief
human resources officers are at least reasonably confident in their
organization’s workforce strategy to prepare for these shifts. The main
barriers to a more decisive approach include companies’ lack of

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