We recently wrote about the skills workers will need for new jobs that will emerge during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some of these jobs are already up for grabs, and some will become commonplace in the next ten years. Consider these possibilities:
Learning for Life Coach
Lifelong learning will help people keep pace with changing work environments and new tasks. But how will employees chart paths that bring engagement and satisfaction? Learning for life coaches will help employees pursue their personal and career goals while meeting their employers’ needs. Learner profiles, assessments, qualifications, internal systems, and the labor market will help coaches serve as valuable advocates and advisors. Connecting closely with employees will enable coaches to detect problems, mitigate them, and even head off unnecessary resignations.
Head of Business Behavior
The widespread adoption of sensors and bio metric technology in the workplace will make it easier for organizations to understand employee behavior. Heads of business behavior will lead workforce intelligence teams that develop data-driven strategies in areas such as employee experience, cross-company collaboration, and workplace success.
Work from Home Facilitator
This person will evaluate, budget for, and integrate digital collaboration tools to ensure that remote employees have the technology they need to do their best work. Job qualifications include empathy, excellent communication skills, and in-depth knowledge of technology, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), for interaction and collaboration.
HR Data Detective
HR Data Detective
Curiosity, resilience, and persistence typify people who take on the role of sourcing, sifting, and investigating people data. HR data detectives dig deep into multiple sources, including everything from HR information systems and human capital management systems to employee surveys, time-tracking records, and benefits portals. The HR data detective will transform unstructured information, such as employee sentiment, text, email, video, or voice inputs, into usable information to aid decisions making.
Business Continuity Strategist
Business continuity planning helps organizations prevent and recover from potential threats. An effective plan ensures that personnel and assets can resume quickly in the event of a disaster. The business continuity strategist will lead the development, implementation, and maintenance of business continuity and risk management programs. In this role, being able to form cross-functional partnerships and communications at all levels is critical.
Algorithm Auditor
Conducting a rigorous investigation into every algorithm across the organization, the algorithm auditor will work with development teams in tech and business functions to review new AI-based applications and existing systems. The auditor’s inventory system will log and track the objectives, input, output and related human value judgments and consequences of each significant algorithm an organization uses.
Chatbot & Human Facilitator
Here’s a role for someone passionate about conversational interfaces for employees and customers. The chat-bot & human facilitator will work with voice UX designers to optimize voice-as-a-platform systems – including accents, inflections, turns of phrase, and jargon. These improvements will heighten empathetic inputs and create a better experience for clients and workers alike.
Talent Task Manager
Thanks to new technologies and business models, organizations can develop talent internally, buy in highly skilled workers, retain gig workers, or offload tasks to automation. The talent task manager, working within a talent marketplace model to access needed skills, will help determine how to assign tasks and roles most efficiently and effectively – whether to people or machines.
Distraction Prevention Coach
Who couldn’t benefit from having someone help them hone their attention both inwardly (to align their values and intuitions) and outwardly (to navigate the world around them)? The distraction prevention coach will educate employees at all levels about the nature of stress and help them manage it to increase their focus, productivity, and effectiveness.
Diversity and Inclusion Data Analyst
Most businesses today realize that it’s vital to encourage diversity and inclusion throughout the organization. While efforts like unconscious bias training have been used for decades to meet corporate diversity goals, the increased use of algorithms, automation and AI has put a new spin on how bias can seep into decision-making and everyday actions. The D&I Data Analyst will work with senior decision-makers, managers, and IT to analyze data and ensure that recommendations are understandable, transparent, and free of bias.
Future of Work Leader
This senior strategist can envision new business models and new roles that will be needed in the next decade. This individual will synthesize many big-picture inputs from academia, leading think tanks, industry umbrella organizations and regional, and national organizations to anticipate next-generation skills to fuel the business.
Human-Machine Teaming Manager
The future of work will be based on how well companies blend and extend the abilities of humans and machines to ensure collaboration. The human-machine teaming manager will identify tasks, processes, systems, and experiences that newly available technologies could improve. This professional will imagine new approaches, skills, interactions, and constructs—defining roles and responsibilities and setting the rules for how machines and workers should coordinate to complete a task.
Workplace Environmental Architect
The workplace environmental architect will design strategies for improving the workers’ wellness, including human-centered design. Expertise in architecture, human-centered design, and public health will help the architect create a healthy, nurturing workplace. This person will foster an organization-wide understanding of well-being’s value and the importance of providing a wellness-supporting workplace environment.
Director of Employee Well-Being
The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the need for every organization to establish a well-being strategy for its workers. Even before the pandemic, two-thirds of full-time workers experienced job-related burnout. Hence the need for someone to design, develop, and implement well-being programs aligned with an organization’s culture, mission, and values. The role incorporates a holistic vision that seeks to weave mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being into its fabric.
Purpose Officer
Organizations increasingly recognize that “purpose” attracts customers while also engaging employees. The purpose officer will help shape and promote a corporate purpose strategy that aligns with the organization’s suppliers, clients, customers, and employees.
Human Network Analyst
The human network analyst will use data analytics and AI to analyze and visualize working relationships. Data from tools for organizational network analysis (ONA), virtual ONA (email and messaging, for example), and physical ONA (such as GPS and ID badges) to answer queries, present solutions, and provide answers to questions that have yet to be asked.
VR and AT Specialists
VR and AT specialists will use virtual and augmented reality to help managers and teams design, facilitate, personalize, and scale workforce training and collaboration. These specialists will help engineers, training and development managers, and technologists supercharge collaboration and task completion.
Summary
New technologies and business models will drive emerging roles and responsibilities. As some functions disappear, new ones will appear. Those who aspire to these new jobs will need periodic reskilling to keep pace with the ever-changing demands of the twenty-first-century world of work.
