Are Digital Skills the Key to Job Security in 2024?

The digital revolution is here, and it doesn’t care if you have a technical job or not — it’s coming to shake up the way you work.

Maybe you’ve already noticed the changes: 

• Demand for data and coding skills in non-tech sectors, like healthcare
• Managers are expected to run digital collaboration sessions
• New cybersecurity protocols
• Marketers need to be across social media

Industry 4.0 is poised to transform many jobs through automation. COVID-19 has ramped up our shift to digital ways of working. The upshot? Digital skills are no longer optional. Those without will be stranded on the other side of the ‘digital divide’ — left without the skills they need to keep up.

In 2023, the question isn’t “Will it affect your job?”. It’s, “How will you adapt?” 

Here’s how two people adapted to changing industries and boosted their employability.

Evie’s pathway from study to a new career was surprisingly short, considering she wasn’t actively looking for a new job. “I was just looking around, and an opportunity popped up in October. And then I had a job in December — I got that job. It all happened so fast.”

Evie was reluctant to spend a long time studying at university. “What if you commit to a four-year degree and then get halfway and realise, “Oh my God, I don’t even like this?”

Instead, she focused on gaining skills that would get her job-ready, which she says paid off in her new role. “I use what I learned in the course every day,” she says.

Marketing is notorious for jargon and acronyms, which are overwhelming for somebody new to the industry. But after studying, Evie says, “I know the lingo.”

Evie considers herself more at home with visual communication, so she appreciated the practical, visual focus of the course. “All the assignments were all presentations but visual, so it was all about more images and less wording. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is where I’m supposed to be.’”

Evie chose online study – even though she lives close to Sydney – because it was flexible and fit around her schedule. “I wanted to keep working as much as I could and study. So this is the best of both worlds.”

“Being online, you can feel like you’re on your own — but it didn’t feel like that.” With easy-to-digest course content and one-on-one access to her tutor, she says, “I felt fully supported.”

Evie is excited about her prospects and glad she chose digital skills as her path into a creative career. “It’s good to have gotten in early because everyone’s starting to discover it now.” 

After noticing how technology solves (and also creates) community pharmacy problems, Avishkar started to get his own ideas. How could technology help alleviate real frustrations and bottlenecks in his industry? 

“I’m very pro-technology, obviously. But even though I’m happy to bring technology into pharmacy, my colleagues are resistant. They don’t know how these things work. It’s that mentality that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  

He knew his colleagues’ frustrations and attitudes first-hand. How might he create a technology that would serve his colleagues rather than make their jobs more challenging or complicated?

“Pharmacy is such a busy environment. There is no time to train staff up to scratch on dealing with customers, the required product knowledge, and the necessary procedures.”  Avishkar also knew that while educational resources were available online, staff were unlikely to sit down and study them after work. So he came up with a better idea.

Instead of asking senior staff questions about products and protocols, junior staff could use the app and increase their knowledge when it suited them — like on the train or during lunch break.

He also knew that his perspective made him the right person to build it. 

“When I’d talk to my friends about it, they say, ‘Oh, you could just give it to an IT guy to do it’. But the problem with that one is that, yes, the IT guy would know how to develop an app, but they wouldn’t know the pharmacy field.”

Avishkar had the idea. Now he needed the skills to pull it off. The next step was to take on a course, and he chose a Certificate IV in Programming with Upskilled. 

This online course was practical and covered a range of IT skills. He particularly gelled with databases, which satisfied his natural tendency to organise and sort information. “I seem to be one of those people who is very organised. So that’s pretty much what database software entails, right?”

“And the other part that I liked was the final assignment when you had to make an app,” Avishkar reflects. “I made one called morning yoga, so it was just a set of yoga poses that you made in an app. And you tried to present it. It was quite fun.”

Avishkar now finds he’s more confident using the changing technologies at work and helping others adopt new technologies in the pharmacy.

This new understanding has also enabled him to troubleshoot with less frustration. “It’s not ‘just a piece of junk’ like people say when dealing with computers, and they don’t work. You understand that this is why it’s not working, and then you can fix things better.”

He hopes to start working on his pharmacy training app soon after finding the right partner for the project.

“And I think it’s going to help a lot of people. Imagine that you’ve got something to help teach you all the ups and downs of pharmacy.”

Whether you’re angling for a digital career or adapting to the digital changes in your field, building a solid digital skill set is essential. 

If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, that’s completely understandable. But don’t stress — focus on adding or upgrading these transferable skills first, and your foundation will be rock-solid for building more niche advanced skills.

Are you looking to grow your career in a fresh new direction? Or expand your skill set and become more effective in your current career track? You’ll need digital skills to get there, wherever you’re aiming for. 

But upgrading your skills doesn’t have to mean taking a career pause. A significant upside to this change is that self-paced online learning is better than ever, enabling you to level up your skills alongside your day-to-day work. 

Click ‘enquire’ on a course, and get a callback from a course advisor to discuss your study options.