A New Approach For A New Era

The Foundation for Young Australians has been working through a series of research projects focused on what work in the future (think 2030 ish) will look like, the skills young people today will need and how their careers will develop and evolve.

If we work on the basis that the research and assumptions are sound and to be honest I don't believe there's anything in the position being put forward that seems unreasonable, then we're rapidly moving to a very different world of work.

Now, many would suggest that there's nothing new in this idea. With the preponderance of AI, automation and other technologies across so many sectors it's pretty well understood that jobs are changing and new skills are being required.

Perhaps what we've not really done though is to take a step back and look at it from the perspective of the generation coming behind us.

What are the challenges they are going to face as they head into careers that potentially won't look anything like the ones many of us started out in?

I'm not exactly a dinosaur, but when I left university and started working my career path was completely linear. No bones about it. Every step on the career ladder was neatly laid out from the bottom to the top.

There were no side corridors, branches or variations. You started at the bottom and over time would expect to progressively work your way to the top. The main barriers were how quickly vacancies above you would open up.

With the major shift towards focusing on solving problems (up 100%), leveraging critical thinking and creativity (up 41%) and leaning on the STEM skills so many kids are learning from primary school (up 77%) work is going to look so very different to when I started at least!

Though for some segments of our potential workforce this changing dynamic is likely to prove to their absolute advantage.

There are groups in the community today who are desperately underrepresented in our national workforce that will find their natural predispositions valued more and more.

I'm talking about the 125,000 odd people on the Autism spectrum in Australia. This is a group who have the opportunity to come to the fore in our new world workforce.

With the need to find innovative solutions, a greater reliance on science and maths skills and using critical thinking, neurodivergent graduates will be better placed to play to their strengths than ever before.

A group of natural out of the box thinkers who see the world differently from the majority is what we'll be looking for.

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