Creating a smarter future for our students post Covid-19

How robots will help us do less, achieve more and prioritise our human values.

We are currently living in uncertain times. COVID-19 has spread across the globe at an alarming rate bringing with it disruption to our health, the economy and our livelihoods. It would appear that the future is bleak for our students and graduates as they grapple with the biggest game-changer we have seen in our lifetime. However, it is not all doom and gloom; there is light at the end of the tunnel and in years to come we may look back on this time and recognise it as the single-most positive disruptor to the way we work, the skills we value and the support we offer our students. 

Move fast, connect things

Mark Zukerberg once famously stated ‘Move fast and break things’ a motto many entrepreneurs adopted in an attempt to disrupt and propel their business forward. A recent article by @simonlporter offered a variant of this-‘Move fast and make things’ describing brilliant innovations such as 3D printers that have enabled the creation and supply of face masks to the NHS. Closer to home, I believe that our profession has been ‘Moving fast and connecting things’ whether to connect students to staff, employers to students or peer to peer. Technology such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive are taking centre stage and enabling unprecedented remote working; The Guardian reports a 535% rise in the use of the Zoom App alone. 

So, should we be welcoming this advancement in tech trends, or will this open the door to humans in the workplace facing extinction as we become replaced by new innovations, who can act smarter, faster and with more impact? Not according to Dr James Canton, CEO for the Institute of Global Futures, who believes Artificial Intelligence will become extensions of human minds and enable us to do more, be more creative and solve bigger global challenges. 

At University of Liverpool we have been embracing new technologies for the last 18 months to support the employability of our students, trialling and testing what works and adds value. As Emma Moore, Director of Careers & Employability explains in her recent article, our physical Career Studio space allows our students to ‘chat to a Career Coach, research employers in the augmented reality connect space or spin the wheel in a gamified careers exploration experience. It is these experiential activities that will drive repeat engagement and sustain interest in our offer.’ 

As we work remotely, our Career Coaches are offering their support virtually and we are working hard to create an online space to mimic our three experiential physical zones; Explore, Connect and Apply.  

We will shortly be adopting Handshake as our new career platform alongside a range of tools and software that will allow students to have an immersive online experience that, even beyond this crisis, will complement our offer. This reliance on new tech will not reduce our influence, rather the providers will become our partners, extending our reach whilst freeing up our time to build deeper more impactful partnerships with a manageable group of employers. We should be leading by example, exposing our students to new tools used by employers and encouraging them to stay close to technology essential to navigating the future in years to come. 

Learning new tricks 

Technology will get smarter but humans will remain critically important to the workplace. Regardless of your aspirations, Liselotte Lyngso, a Futurist at Future Navigator, predicts the need to adapt to the innovation economy and learn new skills. She believes that for too long humans have been acting like machines and in the future new technology will allow us to be better humans again. Creativity is at the top of her list, and as technology works to eliminate the mundane tasks from our workload using clever algorithms, creative ideas will be given time to flourish and breathe. 

Interestingly, Liselotte claims that being creative is also about being lazy, irritated and curious. Human frustration is a huge driving force and often leads to us asking for a smarter way to do things. The Futurist’s example is one we can all resonate with, how can machines better answer and respond to our less important emails we can’t be bothered dealing with? However, we can see examples of these ‘lazy’ innovations everywhere we look in our homes and workplaces. 

Another set of skills, she believes will be sought after by employers, will be acquired through gaming and she predicts a rise in gamification as a tool to better connect us through both virtual and blended realities. Solving problems and working collaboratively are key to games such as Fortnite and Minecraft, but she claims the real advantage to post-millenials will be their ability to learn how to recover from failure quickly, develop resilience and learn from their peers. 

Finally, Project Management will be a key skill in the future irrespective of your industry or project expertise. This skill-set will be in demand due to the complexities of organisations and the need to be increasingly more competitive. The current shift to working online has produced glimpses of how Project Management can be important to universities. The Student Success team, equipped with a number of Project Officers have been supporting various departments across our institution to re-adjust, collaborate and take action using tools and software to help us make informed decisions. 

It is important at times like this to engage a one-team approach to enhancing the student experience. Our Project Officers have managed new projects required during this time, such as the tech-driven ‘Check-In’ Chats to all those students residing in local student and private accommodation. The coordination of activity between teams such as Accommodation, Student Welfare and Guidance and Careers & Employability have ensured that we have acted quickly, efficiently and creatively. The role of the Project Officer is not to have all the answers, but to simplify processes, keep track of progress and ensure outputs are achieved.

A meaningful shift

Rather than be a threat, AI can empower us to change the way we value work and help us to create meaning wherever we are. This global crisis has taught us to take time for others and to re-evaluate what is important in our own lives. We have adapted to new ways of working and will get comfortable with the change this brings. Our workplaces have recognised that employers can easily work from home and this behaviour is likely to be encouraged in the future, improving our quality of life and mental health. It has exposed the arbitrary practice of working 9-5 to be outdated and now places more emphasis on valuing outputs rather than time.

Hundreds of new jobs will be created, but instead of doing more and experiencing burn out, technology will allow us to slow the pace down, become more productive and favour meaningful work. Millennials are already prioritising organisations based on the impact they have on society. David Price Futurist at the London Innovation Unit reports that 60 % millennials choose an employer with a sense of purpose and 71 % say that they need companies to do more to address global issues. A recent study released by Deloitte-Global Human Capital trends confirms this shift.

The newly introduced Graduate Outcome questions relating to how meaningful or important students feel their activity to be, will be be given more prominence and as Tristram Hooley in his HEPI article asserts-

'careers and employability provision may need to emphasise social justice, community and the contribution that people can make to their locality rather than always emphasising high salary and high status roles.'

So, whilst staying home and staying safe, be assured, the future is brighter and smarter than you think and, for those of you with children, remember to go easy on those lazy gamers-you may just have a future genius on your hands.

Interested in finding out more about future workplace predictions listen to OZY The Future of X:The Workplace Podcast.