THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Skills push needed for digital era

Skills push needed for digital era

THE private and public sectors should upgrade workers’ skills to meet the needs of automation in Thai industry by 2030, a report said.

By that year, data scientists, data engineers and digital designers would become the top three tiers of the workforce in Thailand, McKinsey & Co (Thailand) said in the report.
Noppamas Sivakriskul, a partner at McKinsey & Co (Thailand), said the findings came from a survey, “DigiThaization: Automation and Future of Jobs in Thailand”, that it conducted last year. The survey estimated that Thai industry will enter into full automation in 2030.
The company said automation can “shift and take multiple forms to support business such as in robotic process automation, smart workflow that integrates task performance by groups of workers and machines, machine learning, natural language processing that create seamless interactions between humans and technology as well as cognitive agents that build a virtual workforce capable of supporting employees and customers”. 
Noppamas said: “Automation can boost productivity globally and contribute to GDP growth by 0.8 to 1.4 per cent annually. Therefore, business and government should provide re-skilling for workers to support the automation era.”
She said that automation will impact all countries. The survey reported that around 6.9 million Thai workers will be required to re-skill and they need to transition to new occupations such as nursing assistants and Web developers. 
“Sewing machine operators will replace assembly line workers in 2030,” Noppamas said. She said the three top occupations in the machine era are data scientists, data engineers and digital designers, “so that they will able to utilise data to increase the productivity and efficiency of businesses and support the demands of the market”. 
McKinsey said the factors that will drive business and government to re-skill workers include a broad range of incentives and a modernised education system.
 

nationthailand