If you’re a newer member of today’s Federal workforce, you will be the “established guard” in 2020. So, have you given any thought to what type of workforce skills you’ll need from your workforcewhen your career is at mid-term?
We talk so much about today’s workforce issues that sometimes we forget how important it is to look ahead and prepare for our future workforce needs. As if we’ve learning nothing from today’s geometrically changed workforce, generational issues as well as future workforce needs will continue to evolve! BUT, all is not lost if we remember: preparation is a great way to avoid future skills gaps.
In her March 12th GovExec blog, Brittany Ballenstedt talks about the Federal workforce of 2020. She described seven of the most desired skills for young people in 2020 and several very poignant expectations about those new employees:
- Hyper-connectivity and multitasking skills in the 2020 workforce will yield “baleful results”;
- Public problem-solving through cooperative work, or crowdsourcing will be a necessity;
- The ability to search effectively for information online and be able to discern the quality of information;
- The ability to synthesize details;
- Being strategically future-minded;
- The ability to concentrate; and
- The ability to distinguish between “noise” and the real message.
Welcome to the future. What’s in your workforce?
I like them but I’d flesh out #2. To me I see a couple pieces:
-Solve public-sector problems via all resources (internal staff, inter-agency collaboration, public/private partnerships, challenges, crowdsourcing, etc)
-Solve public-sector problems via technology – I think a key here is to be able to keep up with the pace of technology change and think how can be leveraged to solve govt problems
Good points Steve! Collaboration at all levels and with all valuable sources of input are a “must”. Additionally, if the driving force behind today’s challenges is based on the speed of evolving technologies, there’s every reason to expect the pace of tomorrow’s evolving technologies to escalate as well, creating the same challenges tomorrow for our future workforce to keep pace!