Saturday, October 28, 2023

Closing digital skills gap could spur global economic growth by $11.5 trillion


The digital revolution will require reskilling at least half of today’s employees, according to research in a new book.

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  • This significant lack of expertise means firms are not fully embracing the automation revolution, costing businesses valuable time and money.
  • Intelligent Automation: Bridging the Gap between Business and Academia delves into how companies and universities can use intelligent automation to address the challenges preventing the workforce from prospering amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

 

(NEW YORK – October 16, 2023) The economic benefits of intelligent automation are vast, potentially totaling trillions of dollars in economic growth, according to research in a new book.

Businesses and organizations need to be prepared with proactive digital strategies in order to tap into these benefits, ensuring sustained economic growth, the book asserts.

Intelligent Automation: Bridging the Gap Between Business and Academia highlights the huge hurdles that the public and private sector, as well as universities must overcome if countries are to realize the full benefits of the digital revolution.

Lead co-editor Marie Myers collects a series of expert opinions from across industries to illustrate how companies and educational institutions can collectively and individually upskill their workforce.

“The advent of intelligent automation presents a golden opportunity for nations worldwide. Through collaboration and forward-thinking, we are on the brink of an exciting era of prosperity and progress,” Myers explains.

“Yet, today, very few academic institutions have the vision or dedicated resources to prepare students to work with Intelligent Automation adequately. Frankly, greater investments in this area are sorely needed – this is our future.”

Major transformation

The book’s other co-editors, visionary business strategist and lecturer Carol Brace and Assistant Professor Lila Carden, explore the future of work citing statistics that show the global digital transformation market is expected to grow from $470 billion in 2020 to $1 trillion by 2025.

But according to digital analysts, digital transformation is taking organizations twice as long, and costing at least twice as much, partly due to their workforce’s lack of digital readiness.

The duo suggest that businesses must continue to focus on the skills and capabilities of their workforce to remain competitive and keep up with the ever-changing pace of the digital era. One way to do that is to partner with academic institutions to create a steady pipeline of digitally fluent workers.

“The shift in the division of labor between humans and machines has led to digital transformation initiatives requiring new digital skills and new digital roles. While the demand for digital skills is high, the supply is low, and businesses are challenged to find individuals with the essential digital skills required.

“To close the gap, we recommend a framework that is based on a close partnership between organizations and academic institutions,” says Brace.

And according to the authors. the digital revolution will require the reskilling of at least 50% of employees and 40% of their core skills will need updating to meet rising digital intensity and demands.

Insightful strategies

Highlighting the scale of the problem, the book draws on expertise from a wide range of strategy, technology, and supply chain and logistics experts to provide actionable remedies.

The book provides practical guidance in navigating change in any organization, with insight from Shail Khiyara, widely regarded as a unicorn in the automation industry; Aftab Ahmed, Compliance and IT Audit Manager at oil giant ConocoPhillips; Digital Process Automation expert Kriti Kapoor; intelligent automation solutions expert Partha Baral; Digital Process and Automation professional Bobby Jutley; Assistant Professor Dr. Tiffany Moldano; Director of Intelligent Automation at VMware Neeraj Mathur.

Importantly, some of the contributors stress the human element amid the tech revolution, noting that organizational and cultural change are vital aspects of any aspirations surrounding automation.

Furthermore, readers are given strategies to help them introduce technological and workflow changes to their organizations with examples of best practices.

This approach equips business leaders and educators with the ability to implement the right tools and strategies to deal with the digital disruptions of today and tomorrow.

Towards a better balance

Myers and her co-editors tackle live work-centric debates intrinsically linked to automation, including helping workers achieve a better work-life balance.

Technology is hailed as a tool that can be used to conduct routine, mundane tasks for humans, but as the authors state, this won’t happen at the click of a button.

Firms must ensure they fully understand how and where automation could fit into their organization, explore the best and most effective ways to upskill their employees, and employ a collaborative team approach when implementing new systems and strategies.

“I am intrigued and excited about a more automated enterprise that allows people to focus on value-added and interesting work, and leave the more mundane, routine-bound work to the bots,” Myers said.

“With the current gap in digital skills in the global economy, and an increasing desire for more leisure time, few options will enable this change. However, if organizations embrace intelligent automation and generative AI, we firmly believe that the convergence of these two groundbreaking technologies will revolutionize the way we work for generations to come."

Students’ ICT skills pay off in math performance


Students who are more digitally skilled also perform better in math. New research from Renae Loh and others at Radboud University shows that in countries with better availability of ICT in schools, math performance benefits greatly.


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RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN




Students who are more digitally skilled also perform better in math. New research from Renae Loh and others at Radboud University shows that in countries with better availability of ICT in schools, math performance benefits greatly. It further suggests that improving the ICT environment in schools can reduce inequality in education between countries. The paper is published in European Educational Research Journal today.

For anyone growing up today, ICT skills play a tremendously important role. Today's youth constantly come into contact with technology throughout their life, both in work and leisure. Though previous studies have shown the importance of ICT skills in students’ learning outcomes, a new study focuses specifically on its relevance to math and how that differs between countries. ‘Both ICT and math rely on structural and logical thinking, which is why ICT skills overlap with and boosts math learning. But we were also curious to find out how much of that depends on a country's ICT environment,’ says Renae Loh, primary author of the paper and a sociologist at Radboud University. 

Benefits of a strong ICT infrastructure 

Loh and her colleagues used data from the 2018 PISA Study and compares 248,720 students aged 15 to 16 across 43 countries. Included in this data is information about the ICT skills of these students. They were asked whether they read new information on digital devices, and if they would try to solve problems with those devices themselves, amongst other questions. The more positively students responded to these questions, the more skilled in ICT the researchers judged these students to be. 

Loh: ‘What we found is that students get more educational benefit out of their digital skills in countries with a strong ICT infrastructure in education.  This is likely because the more computers and other digital tools are available to them in their studies, the more they were able to put those skills to use, and the more valued these skills were. It is not a negligible difference either. A strong ICT infrastructure in education could boost what math performance benefits students gain from their digital skills by about 60%. Differences in ICT infrastructure in education accounted for 25% of the differences between countries in how much math benefits students gain from their digital skills. It is also a better indicator than, for example, looking at a more general indicator of country wealth, because it is more pinpointed and more actionable.’  

Reducing inequality 

Especially notable to Loh and her colleagues was the difference that was apparent between countries with a strong ICT infrastructure, and countries without. ‘It was surprisingly straightforward, in some ways: the higher the computer-to-student ratio in a country, the stronger the math performance. This is consistent with the idea that these skills serve as a learning and signalling resource, at least for maths, and students need opportunities to put these resources to use’ Loh points out that there are limits to the insight offered by the data, however. ‘Our study doesn’t look at the process of how math is taught in these schools, specifically. Or how the ICT infrastructure is actually being used. Future research might also puzzle over how important math teachers themselves believe ICT skills to be, and if that belief and their subsequent teaching style influences the development of students, too.’  

‘There is still vast inequality in education around the world,’ warns Loh. ‘And now there's an added ICT dimension. Regardless of family background, gender, and so on, having limited access to ICT or a lack in digital skills is a disadvantage in schooling.  What is clear is that the school environment is important here. More targeted investments in a robust ICT infrastructure in education would help in bridging the educational gap between countries and may also help to address inequalities in digital skills among students in those countries.’  

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