KUALA LUMPUR: Asia’s leading online employment marketplace SEEK Asia today emphasised the need for employees to continuously reskill and upskill given the fast-evolving Digital Economy.

Its Chief Executive Officer Peter Bithos said that automation is transforming the job landscape and has exposed the shortage of qualified talent in emerging roles, which points to significant opportunities for today's employees to evolve into the 'the workforce of the future'.

“To successfully meet this rising demand for digital tools and processes, employees are now looking to continuously upskill themselves with digital technologies, digital literacy and transferable skills,” said Peter.

He explained that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated organisations’ dependence on technology, and given rise to the demand for a ‘digital first’ workforce.

“Given the current employment situation, there is no better time than now for every member of the workforce – from frontlines to the C-suite – to continually enhance their digital skills to take advantage and thrive in the ‘new norm’,” said Peter, adding that ‘traditional’ roles are fast disappearing while emerging ones are gaining traction.

Peter cited a World Economic Forum (WEF) study which said that the percentage of core skills that would change by 2025 is 40%, with some 50% of all employees needing re-skilling by that time.

An extension of SEEK, SEEK Asia is a participant at the upcoming WEF to be held in Singapore next year.

SEEK Asia, which owns JobStreet and JobsDB in the Asia-Pacific region, is known as a leading employment and career platform, offering the most job placements in each of the markets it operates in.

Peter shared that, even prior to the pandemic, SEEK Asia had been seeing a growing demand for ‘digital first’ skills and emerging roles in data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics and cybersecurity.

“Learning has to be a continuous process to stay relevant in the employment market space,” he said, citing another WEF report that said that 65% of children in schools today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that do not yet exist.

Foreseeing the need for employees to upskill and reskill, SEEK Asia through JobStreet recently ran a campaign with British digital education platform FutureLearn to offer a free course for every individual from world-class universities and industry experts.

FutureLearn, founded in December 2012, is jointly owned by The Open University, a public research university and the largest university in the UK for undergraduate education, and SEEK Asia. It is one of the world’s most reputable open online course learning platforms, and as of June 2020, including 175 UK and international partners, including non-university partners.

“This collaboration was aimed at providing candidates with opportunities to hone the transferrable and emerging skills that will help them ‘future-proof’ their careers as the job market continues to evolve,” said Peter. Courses offered included emerging technologies such as data science, digital marketing and cryptocurrency.

Source: SEEK Asia

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