As the Australian VET sector faces the challenge of ensuring academic integrity in the era of generative AI, as well as how to use the technology within an RTO safely and ethically to improve productivity, we also need to be thinking about how other jobs are changing as a result of AI and what that means for skills development. And in this important task there are things we can learn from the European Union.
Last year researchers looked at the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training’s (CEDEFOP’s) second European skills and jobs survey (ESJS2) which collected data from 46,000 workers in 29 countries. The researchers were interested in examining the impact that digital technology is having on skills and the vocational training needed by European workers.
They identified:
- A growth in AI titles in online job advertisements and a shift over time from jobs requiring workers who can “optimise existing systems” using AI, to employers looking for workers who can develop “innovative AI-driven products and services.”
- That “digital technology leads to higher job satisfaction and lower fear of automation for workers who have a good relationship with their supervisors and when workplace practices effectively use their skills.”
- Younger workers and men were more likely to work in “positions requiring more complex use of digital technology”. And conversely women and older workers were less likely to engage in digital skills training.
- Adopting digital technology is associated with increased levels of training participation and job satisfaction (especially when workers have more autonomy in their jobs).
- Approximately 13% of EU workers experience a significant digital skills mismatch – emphasising the need for more upskilling and reskilling to prepare them to work with new technologies.
- Remote working appears to be a factor contributing to higher-educated workers finding better job matches for their skills, and
- “The learning capacity of organisations plays a critical role in addressing the skill mismatch challenges of the digital transformation; organisational and process innovations tend to have a positive impact, helping to reduce skill underutilisation and overqualification in workplaces.”
The research was presented at the December 2024 CEDEFOP “Human-Centred Digital Transitions: Skill Mismatches in European Workplaces” workshop. Copies of all of the papers presented at the workshop are available on the CEDEFOP website.
