Scarborough recruitment specialists' reaction to skills' report

As one of Yorkshire’s leading recruitment agencies, KD Recruitment has accessed the Future of Jobs Report: The Top 10 Job Skills of Tomorrow (third edition) which is compiled by the World Economic Forum. The forum’s role is to map out jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change and direction of travel for the future of employment.

Kelly Dunn, managing director of KD Recruitment, said: “As recruitment specialists, KD Recruitment has its ‘finger on the pulse’ of local, regional and global employment trends. We can help employers enable their business to become ‘futureproof’ and to have a skilled workforce to match.”

The Future of Jobs Report highlights the significant of the ‘double-disruption’ caused by the Covid-19 pandemic: the economic impact along with increasing automation. It then goes on to highlight the top ten jobs skills that will come to the forefront for businesses in the next five years.

Kelly said: “This latest report looks into the future and reveals some interesting trends and predictions for the employment industry in the Scarborough region.

“Scarborough's hospitality, leisure and tourism industries, which makes up the majority of the workforce in the area, have been badly affected, however there are many businesses that are growing within online retail, technology, food manufacturing and engineering. The skills that will come in useful for these markets include technology use and development, complex problem solving, active learning and learning strategies along with creativity, originality and flexibility.

“The good news is ongoing jobs transformations could also provide many job seekers with redeployment into new roles in the future.

“While the pandemic has undoubtedly impacted upon the jobs market, here at KD Recruitment we are at the forefront of changes to the recruitment sector and know that reskilling and upskilling will be crucial for successful employment going forward.”

he World Economic Forum’s Founder and Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, says in the report: “We have the tools at our disposal. The bounty of technological innovation which defines our era can be leveraged to unleash human potential. We have the means to reskill and upskill in unprecedented numbers and to orient displaced workers towards the jobs of tomorrow.”

The report estimates that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines; however, even more jobs – 97 million – may emerge that are more adapted to this new division of labour.

Kelly said: “Critical thinking and problem-solving top the list, however, newly emerging this year are skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility which are so important to the businesses in our region.

“In terms of delivering and acquiring the new skills, 94% of business leaders expect employees to pick up new skills ‘on the job’.

“This includes time-intensive retraining programmes, online learning and external consultants with training time taking anything from one to five months and sometimes longer.

“We are working with many businesses in the area to support them with reskilling their existing workforce to shape them for the future.

“One of the main outcomes so far of the pandemic has been a steep rise in online reskilling with a fivefold increase in some instances.”

The report concludes that learning a new skills set will become increasingly accessible through digital technologies. However, employees will need time and funding to pursue these new opportunities.