“The robots will steal all our jobs!” According to movies, articles, tweets, and your uncle at family gatherings, with the progression of technology comes the inevitable point that our digital creations will put us out of work altogether. But this is not the case. Will jobs be eliminated?Yes, but...According to Gartner, 85 million jobs will be eliminated, and 97 million new ones will be created by 2025 all thanks to developments in AI. That’s an overall addition of 12 million jobs by the end of the next three years. (World Economic Forum)With this information the statement isn’t “robots will steal our jobs” it’s, “how do we need to adapt our workforce to this new, massive shift?”

Build Speed With Agile Solutions

In order to accommodate the future of work, you need to build up a little speed. This could mean anything from scaling your business, to developing competitive market features, to diversifying your offerings. However you choose to grow, two things are true; you will need to become good at adapting, and you will need to become good at sourcing skilled workers for new developing technologies.The best way to build speed into your digital transformation plan is by embracing agile methodologies. Think of agile methodologies as a step-by-step playbook for accomplishing goals - and you can apply this to software development, or to your hiring strategies. For our purposes, let’s look at how this can be applied to hiring and building your team.Agile methods start with planning - so a first step is to outline your needs now, and what your needs will be six months and a year from now. Once you’ve completed your planning - you need to outline a timeline of tasks, and then decide who will be tackling these tasks. Do you have specific requirements? Are these people already employed? Will you have to outsource?

Partner with a Platform

Partnering with a tech solutions platform can not only help you source talent, but also plan and execute your goals on a timeline.The most critical step of agile methods is one of the final ones, and that is continuous integration. With the workforce drastically shifting towards “gig economy” - you can expect to be working more and more with independent contractors, fully remote teams, and short-term employees. This sounds scary - but it gives you such great flexibility and once you learn the ropes, this workplace evolution affords significant growth benefits.

Integrating Automation Into Your Solution

Along with a flexible workforce comes an increasing online business marketplace. As we have come to say in the past few years - every company is now a tech company. All of our solutions from payment providers, to contact forms, to websites and databases are a network of cloud-hosted third-party solutions and extensive internal networks. All of it adds up to equal an unending stream of processes and tasks that have to be kept up- and the most efficient way to do this is to automate these tasks. Automation is key for speed, security, and reliability, and frees up your team to think and be creative and ideate on ways to adapt and grow your company.

Rethink Your Workforce Structure

The future of work is dynamic. Rethinking how you use your workforce is critical. Incorporation automation and AI solutions require a mindset shift from viewing these programs as “nice-to-haves” or only for hyper-technical applications - and instead viewing them as standard-issue protocols. 37% of organizations surveyed by Gartner in 2019 now use AI in the workplace. And you can expect that number to greatly jump by the end of 2025.AI offers a myriad of solutions - mainly in how you are able to view, manipulate, and use the data you collect. Nothing is going to be more powerful or useful to you than the detailed information of your own company, site user experiences, and transactions. A major part of this next phase of work will be figuring out all the different ways to use that data to create new avenues and opportunities.

Digital Acceleration

So, let’s bring this all together. Digital acceleration is the art of using technology to create new products, evolve business models, and increase customer engagement and transactions. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? These core principles harken back to the industrial revolution, and before that to previous eras of bursts of creativity. To achieve this level of creativity, you will not only need agile development solutions but an agile workforce to discover and enact them. From a single contracted developer, to a full-fledged marketing team to help you create an impactful web presence and brand - at TECKpert, we’ve got the knowledge ready to help you get up to speed and find the people and skills you need to prepare. 2025 will be here before you know it! Let’s talk now to map out your plan for digital transformation success, reach out to us for a custom look at what that timeline means for you.