According to the Business Services IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast the top priority skills required for the Business Services industry are:
- Digital competency
- Business competence
- Social competence
- Critical thinking, problem solving and strong interpersonal skills
- Data literacy
- Technical skills.
The following are also identified as the top generic skills for the Business Services industry:
- Learning agility / Information literacy / Intellectual autonomy and self management (adaptability)
- Design mindset / Thinking critically / System thinking / Solving problems
- Communication / Virtual collaboration / Social intelligence
- Managerial / Leadership
- Data analysis
- Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN), Foundation Skills).
Job vacancy data indicates that the top occupations in demand in the Business Services industry are:
- Information Officers
- Call or Contact Centre Workers
- Accountants
- Actuaries, Mathematicians and Statisticians
- Software and Applications Programmers.
According to the same vacancy data, the top generic skills in demand from employers in this industry are:
- Communication skills
- Problem solving
- Detail-orientated
- Organisational skills
- Building effective relationships.
The Business Services IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast identifies the following key drivers for change:
- Technological change including the automation of job tasks and technologies facilitating globalisation and offshoring
- New ways of working, including virtual teaming allowing collaboration across geographic locations, the gig economy and digital freelancing platforms, and increasing team diversity
- Increasing agility across industries, meaning workers are not limited to opportunities only within a single industry.
The Future Work for Small Business: Skills, Capabilities and Potential report by Jobs Queensland identified significant demand for knowledge and skills to respond to technology changes and the emergence of the digital economy. Their research and stakeholder engagement consistently identifies business, leadership, management and digital skills and capabilities as critical to the creation, viability and growth of small businesses. A recent survey of businesses in Queensland found that 90 per cent identified a need to become more digitally savvy.
The skills and capability needs of businesses are diverse. Electronic invoicing and social media marketing are now essential for many small businesses. According to the Future Work for Small Business report, building business skills and capabilities including leadership and management that enhances viability, resilience and sustainability of established small businesses in a transitioning economy should be a core focus of future programs.
The Business Services IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast discusses the impact of new technology on the Business Services industry. For the Business Services industry, it is predicted that up to 87% of job tasks for some occupations could be automated, however these occupations have not yet been significantly impacted by automation. Skills which complement automation technology are identified as a need for the future. Technology is also allowing for better collaboration between workers of different geographic locations, contributing to globalisation and an increasing level of diversity amongst team members.
Also discussed are changes in the varieties of work undertaken, as freelancing platforms contribute to a trend towards casual work instead of full-time. Strong interpersonal skills, problem solving and critical thinking skills are identified as a need for this area to enable workers to operate as sole-traders or run micro-businesses. Business Services job roles are identified as being particularly transferable, allowing workers to take up roles in other sectors with relative ease. Micro-credentialing is expected to be in increasing demand to bridge the skills gap for changing work environments and develop agility across industries.
TAFE Enterprise in their white paper Soft Skills vs Hard Skills discuss the impact of automation upon businesses, and identify soft skills such as creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking as being increasingly important to support collaborative work environments as technologies change. This corresponds with points identified in the 2019 skills forecast.
In the National CEO Survey: Business Prospects for 2019: Leadership Needed as Economy Softens by Australian Industry Group, 21% of participating businesses identified skill shortages as their top concern, up from 17% in 2018 and 7% in 2017. They also discuss their 2018 paper, Skilling: A National Imperative, where three quarters of their respondents reported skills shortages, including for the first time skills shortages in the areas of business automation, big data and artificial intelligence.
In a 2017 speech to the Economic Society of Australia, Alexandra Heath, The Head of Economic Analysis at the Reserve Bank of Australia, placed the Business Services industry at the heart of the economic response to technological change. She indicated that this process has driven Business Services to become ‘more important, more specialised and more integrated [with other industries and areas of the market.]’ These changes are likely to have led to higher productivity growth, but more work is needed to understand how this might continue to affect the Business Services industry into the future.
An analysis of the professions most at risk of automation in A Smart Move by PwC shows that the Business Services industry contains many such professions. Occupations such as Accounting Clerk, Bookkeeper, Office Administration Worker or Secretary were among the jobs considered most at risk of automation, indicating that many entry-level positions in Business Services may be eliminated or drastically reduced in the future. This also drives the need for workers to upskill, and particularly to develop skills in creative or customer-service related areas where the risk of automation is relatively low.
