The future of talent cannot only be a conversation about skills. It must also be a conversation about careers.
Today people are being asked to learn faster, adapt more often and build new capabilities as technology reshapes work. This isn’t new. Computers changed the skills that people needed. The Covid-19 pandemic challenged long-held assumptions about where work had to happen. Artificial intelligence is now changing everything from the way information is analysed to how workflows are designed and decisions are made.
Yet at the same time, careers are still being built around the assumption that people can work in much the same way, at much the same intensity, as they have for decades.
That model is becoming harder to sustain.
Working lives do not exist separately from families and personal responsibilities. The strongest labour markets enable people to succeed at work without requiring them to compromise the lives they are working to build.
At Mubadala, for example, we have approached this as part of a broader evolution in how people work and build careers. Over recent years, we have expanded flexible working and support across different stages of life, while also introducing new technologies like AI into the way work gets done. We have been expanding this thinking to both the work itself and the workplace around it. This is why we are now introducing part-time working, building on our existing flexible working arrangements and giving employees greater choice in how they continue to contribute through different stages of their careers.
These shifts are increasingly connected: as the skills that organisations need change faster, so too must the ways they enable experienced people to remain, develop and contribute over the course of their careers.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 39 per cent of workers’ existing skill sets will change or become outdated by 2030, while 63 per cent of employers identify gaps in skills as a major barrier to transformation. Organisations therefore need to attract the right capabilities, continually develop their people and retain experience that cannot simply be replaced as technology advances.
Supporting adaptability in the workplace therefore cannot only mean asking employees to adapt to organisations. Employers also need to consider how they can adapt to their staff members.
An average working life spans 30 to 40 years. During that time, very few lives follow a straight line. People become parents. They care for ageing relatives. They might face changes in their health, pursue further education or go through periods when they need to work differently without wanting to step away from their careers.
Yet the traditional career model has often been far less adaptable than the lives people lead. For many employees, the choice has historically been between remaining fully engaged in a conventional working pattern or stepping back in a way that can carry consequences for progression, visibility and future opportunity.
Employers cannot afford to lose experience, particularly in sectors facing a scarcity of skills, simply because one working model no longer fits their circumstances.
The UAE has been moving in this direction for some time.
Over recent years, the country has steadily expanded the ways in which people can participate in the labour market. UAE legislation recognises full-time, part-time, temporary, flexible, remote and job-sharing models of work. This evolution is taking place as the country strengthens its position as a global destination for talent. Last year, the UAE entered the top 10 of IMD’s World Talent Ranking for the first time, reaching ninth globally.
The Year of Family adds another important dimension. Its focus on flexible and family-friendly working policies, parental leave and family-care support reflects a broader national ambition to strengthen families while enabling people to participate fully in the country’s economic and social progress. These objectives reinforce one another.
Flexibility, however, is only part of the answer. The harder question is what happens after flexibility is offered. Employees who work differently still need access to meaningful assignments, learning, development and career progression. A reduced working schedule should not quietly become a reduced career, nor should it mean reduced expectations.
That requires clearer outcomes, workloads that reflect the time available and expectations that remain clear on both sides.
Performance, accountability, collaboration and excellence do not become less important because somebody works differently. Nor should ambition. The aim is to create another pathway through which capable people can continue contributing, developing and progressing while managing responsibilities outside the workplace. Flexible working policy should be built around a simple principle: different schedules, same standards.
Companies invest considerable time and resources in building capability. They develop people, give them experience and entrust them with increasingly complex responsibilities. It makes little sense to take such a long-term view of capability development while maintaining a short-term view of the circumstances in which people are able to contribute.
The Year of Family provides a timely opportunity to consider this more broadly. Supporting families and building high-performing institutions should not be competing ambitions.
People should not have to choose between continuing to move forward and temporarily moving at a different pace. A career can make room for life without lowering its ceiling.
For institutions that think in years and decades, that is ultimately the perspective that matters: taking as long a view of people as they do of performance.
