workforce
Future careers: care factor rising
Aged care will soon become one of Australia’ s largest employers; workers coming from other sectors will need to blend tech savvy with people skills to succeed.
Andrew Reeson interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Digital technology will continue to transform aged care into the future, from the way workers are trained to the types of career paths they follow, a new report has found.
The recently released CSIRO paper Tomorrow’ s Digitally Enabled Workforce states that the aged-care sector will be one of the largest employers into the future, and adds that workers will need to be digitally literate, due to an explosion in new technologies.
Throughout Australia, most workers will need some hybrid of technical, business, creative and interpersonal skills, the report states.
Through to 2035, the CSIRO states, there will be an explosion in device connectivity and rapid advances in automated systems and artificial intelligence.
As a result, even professionals in traditionally labour-intense occupations such as aged care will probably need to work with computers and operate complex machines.
Here, CSIRO economist Dr Andrew Reeson discusses what such changes will mean for workers as they operate in an increasingly fluid environment, in which many will be called upon to switch sectors and take on roles they may never have envisaged.
ACI: The report states that Australia’ s ageing population will make healthcare and aged care the largest employers. How will this shape the aged-care industry into the future? AR: Well it’ s certainly an area where we’ ve seen strong growth in recent years. The health sector overall has risen rapidly up the rankings as an industry. It’ s now [ one of ] Australia’ s largest employers and within that, [ jobs ] in aged care, in particular, have shown rapid growth. This is already a huge source of employment for Australians and will certainly continue to be. The trends that are driving this are still with us – our population will continue to age.
We’ ll probably have more people wanting and needing aged care; we’ ll see the health sector, more generally, grow. Firstly, because more technologies will become available and secondly because as a society we’ ve become richer and aged care is one area in which we choose to spend our increased wealth.
The report states most workers will need some hybrid of technical, business, creative and interpersonal skills. Will we see an increased focus on abilities key to working in the healthcare and aged-care sectors, perhaps in the same way there is a push for more people gaining science, technology, engineering and maths skills? Yes. Technology is increasingly all around us and is going to be important in an ever greater range of jobs. That said, don’ t panic; it’ s not like we all need to go out there and learn to write software or be developing apps or anything. But it is true that in the future just about all of us will need to use technology fluently. We’ ll need digital literacy and that will be just as important as regular literacy in whatever field, and also for participating in society more generally. In the aged-care sector and in health effects more
38 agedcareinsite. com. au