The then-president of Argentina and host of the G20, Mauricio Macro, once said: “The future of work will be a race between education and technology”. Five years later, amid a global skills shortage that is already costing businesses trillions in lost employee productivity, it certainly seems like technology is winning.
Organizations are empowered and constrained by the skills of the people they employ. When the economy is prosperous and companies are growing fast, they hire new people to fill the skills gaps that emerge. But in a downturn, hiring budgets are frozen, vacancies remain unfilled, and leaders are asked to do more with what they already have.
