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At the end of September, future-of-work strategist Heather McGowan spoke on campus about confronting the changing nature of work. Here are some key takeaways and resources: 

Historically, people have learned in order to work. After spending roughly a third of their lives in school and earning a degree or certificate, they entered the workforce. They have learned a particular set of skills that transfer to a specific profession, and mostly stay on that path or that particular field until retirement. To keep up with the velocity of change and changing nature of workspaces, McGowan believes that we need to become lifelong learners and learn to adapt to leverage our work. 

In her presentation, McGowan addressed many societal changes we are experiencing right now. You can that summarizes many of these changes, and read some highlights from her campus presentation below: For many people, jobs can be a strong part of one’s personal identity. Or for our students, their majors may be closely tied to their identity. With how quickly jobs are changing or disappearing, and new job types are being created, how does this affect our personal identities? With this, McGowan suggests that our identities should be defined more by our purpose rather than what we do for work. And to help keep up with change, we need to become more resilient and adaptable.

Learning should continue even after earning a degree. We need to encourage our students to adopt an agile learning mindset to become lifelong learners. This includes having self-awareness and knowing how we learn best, what motivates us and becoming adaptable.

Currently, there is a shift from valuing technical skills to more behavioral skills, or human traits. The most in-demand skills right now from employers are collaboration, problem solving, adaptability, leadership and emotional intelligence.

When it comes to technical skills, McGowan suggests that we think of them like apps on our phone. We will continuously add new skills and delete old skills over time based on what’s needed and relevant.

As we consider these ideas not only in regards to ourselves, but also in preparing our students for the future of work, here are some resources.

• Student Affairs Employee Learning and Development workshops
• ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Human Resources Learning & Development opportunities

To learn more about the future of work from McGowan, . This 30-minute video covers many of the ideas she shared at her presentation on campus. You can also that recently appeared in Forbes.