Future Work Skills 2020

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent, nonprofit strategic research group with more that 40 years of forecasting experience. In their report Future Work Skills 2020  they presented their results of the research they sponsored to help understand better the skills that workers need to have to be able to face the challenges of the next decade in a changing and global world. Based on their research, they identified six drivers that are showing a strong influence in the future work skills. These are: Extreme longevity, the rise of smart machines and systems, computational world, new media ecology, superstructures organizations and a global connected world. Based on these drivers, they identified ten skills that will be critical in becoming successful workers of 2020.

1. Sense making.- Develop higher thinking level skills to help the decision taking process.
2. Social Intelligence.- Become socially intelligent, which means being able to quickly assess the emotions of co workers or people around them, in order to build collaborative and trustful relationships in different settings.
3. Novel adaptive thinking.- Develop the ability to react positively to unexpected and unique situations.
4. Cross-cultural competency.- Today students have to be prepared to work with people of different cultures, ages, skills, disciplines, speaking different languages. As future employees they need to be able to adapt to different contexts and transcend all differences to communicate effectively and work with others towards shared goals.
5. Computational Thinking.- Workers will have access to an incredible amount of data. However, they will need to understand that the data provided by models is inly an approximation of reality, and will also need to adapt and react to situations where data is not available or easy to get.
6. New Media Literacy.- Future employees need to become fluent in the use of tools like videos, blogs, podcasts when presenting their information to engage and persuade others.
7. Transdisciplinarity.- Future employees will need to be part of multidisciplinary teams, and though they will be expected to be experts in one field, they will also need to have the capacity  to converse in the language of other disciplines. 
8. Design Mindset.- Future employees  will need to recognize the type of thinking that different tasks require. They will need to be open minded and develop critical thinking skills.
9. Cognitive Load Management.- As the amount of information that we have access to grows exponentially, future workers need to asses informations and use the correct tools to recognize what is important, and not become overwhelmed by details that can be distractive.
10. Virtual collaboration.- Future workers need to develop strategies to engage and motivate large virtual groups promoting collaborative work and productivity by keeping objectives clear.

As a teacher, my commitment is to prepare my students to have the ability to meet the challenges of future years. Based on these 10 skills of the future, I conclude that my work in class should be aimed at developing in them skills to think critically, solve problems, work cooperatively to find common goals, communicate effectively, have the capacity to analyze, be tolerant, open minded and develop the ability to adapt to different circumstances, situations and contexts. The use of technology in the classroom through different apps, games, social networks and other tools can be very helpful in achieving this goal.