Coronavirus: digital skills will be just as vital as reading and writing in post Covid-19 age

World Government Summit video conference hears how the landscape has been changed by pandemic

Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, speaks at the Salt conference in Abu Dhabi in December. Antonie Robertson / The National

Performing digital tasks such as coding will soon be as vital as the ability to read and write, said the president of one the country’s leading data firms.

Gavin Patterson, from Salesforce, made his comments during a World Government Summit (WGS) video conference with the Minister for Artificial intelligence, Omar Al Olama on Tuesday afternoon.

He said companies and employees must adapt to the changing landscape created by the Covid-19 pandemic which has permanently altered how business is conducted across the globe.

There is no going back to the way companies did their business before the Covid-19 outbreak, he added.

“There is a huge shortage of people with basic digital skills,” he said.

“One thing governments can do is ensure everyone is taught basic data manipulation and basic digital skills like low code programming.

“In the future, everyone’s job will have some form of digital skills expected within it. You are going to have to know the core digital skills the same way you are expected to read and write.”

The video conference was focused on how to demonstrate business leadership in the face of the pandemic.

"You are going to have to know the core digital skills the same way you are expected to read and write"

Companies all over the world have had to readjust with the majority of the workforce working from home for the first time, due to stay at home measures introduced by governments.

While staff are starting to slowly return to the office, Mr Patterson said the world will never be the same, with the pandemic highlighting the need for firms to have digital strategies in place.

He also said that many of the workforce would have to reassess their skill sets if they wanted to continue to operate at the highest possible level.

“If you are halfway through your career and realise your skills are not as relevant anymore, you can retrain yourself,” he said.

“You can become more digital savvy so when new jobs become available you are better placed to take advantage of them.

“Companies will have a responsibility to help with that retraining. Schools and universities will also have to ensure young people come with those skills prepared when they enter the workplace.”

He added it was vital that companies were not caught cold again by a second wave of Covid-19, which continues to cause shockwaves across global markets.

“We don’t know how we are going to come out of this and it might well be there is a second peak later in the year,” he said.

“We will come through it but the world we revert to is not going to be the same as the one we have come from.”

He said Covid-19 had shown the importance of being prepared for the impact of events that were hard to predict beforehand.

“Even just three months ago in Davos (at the World Economic Forum meeting), this pandemic wasn’t listed in the top 10 risks,” he said.

“Look how much has changed since then.”

Mr Al Olama said the unprecedented crisis was going to continue to create challenges across the world.

“We are in a period of crisis, it’s not just a health crisis, we are at the beginning of an economic crisis as well,” he said.

“In many ways we are still unaware of some of the challenges that are still to come.”