LinkedIn and Microsoft bring the book ‘Open to Work’ to Spain, betting on human skills in the age of AI

The labor market is changing very quickly in a time of disruption marked by artificial intelligence (AI) as the protagonist, however, from LinkedIn and Microsoft they emphasize how human skills are the new axis of opportunities and that the differential value will be in work with technology and not against it.

Faced with the uncertainty that this technology generates for professionals and their careers, from LinkedIn have announced the arrival in Spain of the book ‘Open to Work’, which precisely includes the guidelines so that users can know “how to be one step ahead in the age of AI.”

Written by Executive Vice President of LinkedIn and Microsoft Office, Ryan Roslansky, and LinkedIn Director of Economic Opportunities, Aneesh Raman, ‘Open to Work’ will be available in Spain on next Wednesday, May 6 in Spanish.

This book collects ‘insights’ from more than one billion professionals who interact on the LinkedIn platform to, based on this, provide a clear vision of what is changing, the skills that are really needed and how to stay up to date at work as AI “transforms every aspect of the world of work.”

This was announced by the company in a meeting with the press held this Monday, in which the general director of LinkedIn Iberia, Ángel Sáenz de Cenzano, and the president of Microsoft Spain, Paco Salcedo, participated to discuss closely how the AI is redefining the way we work and what practical implications it has currently for professionals and organizations.

As they have defined it, ‘Open to Work’ is conceived as a guide for professionals regardless of the position and the sector in which they specializesince it is based on an “uncomfortable, but real” idea: “rules of the past” are still used to navigate the present labor market, even when it “already works in a different way.”

In this framework, both managers have agreed that the future of work is being built now and that, while many people already experience and adapt to AI, “the majority feel anxiety and uncertainty and navigate accelerated change with outdated manuals.

According to Salcedo, Spain is the sixth country in the world in the use of AI at a general levelwith about 32 percent of people using it daily. Along with this, there is a rethinking productivity with which AI is evolving from being an assistant to a collaborator and finally to an autonomous operator or agent capable of taking on responsibilities as a “digital employee”.

“We come from the Office generation and we are going towards the generation of agents, where it will not be necessary to program to create one,” Salcedo said in this regard.

Likewise, Sáenz de Cenzano has explained that there is a paradigm shiftsince professionals who now enter the world of work face “twice as many professional stages” as those who entered 15 years ago. This is because, as he has said, it is estimated that the abilities and skills change by 70 percent between the years 2015 y 2030.

Therefore, it is expected that “the “The next four years will come with even more acceleration,” taking into account the more than a million new roles that have already appeared on the LinkedIn platform for the last 15 years. The traditional academic career categories “are no longer enough” and must be seen in a “much more holistic” way, indicated the CEO of LinkedIn in Spain.

RESPONSIBILITY, SECURITY AND TRANSFORMATION

Beyond the point of view of professionals, the Companies also have a relevant role in this paradigm shift in the labor sector and its disruption of the economic model. In this sense, Salcedo has pointed out how, from Microsoft’s experience, the senior management of companies has the responsibility for providing corporate AI tools to employees to “protect the organization’s data sovereignty.”

In addition, he has also clarified that leaders must set an example, create security platforms and foster a culture where employees dare to use technology to “innovate and make mistakes.”

In this sense, Salcedo has pointed out that for a successful adoption of AI, companies must previously have certain foundations prepared. This includes have the data organized and prepared in the cloud, as well as tagged and assigned permissions to guarantee your safety, in addition to having governance by the leaders of the organization.

On the other hand, the CEO of Microsoft has equated this AI-led moment with a “industrial revolution” and has pointed out that, for the first time, Spain is in pole position with access to technology under the same conditions as the rest of Western countries and other regions such as Japan.

At the same time, he has stated that, at the level of changes in the economic model, although AI can be seen as a “deflationary” technology because it saves costs, as in any industrial revolution, it also accelerates the economy by reinvesting that savings in new value. Furthermore, he pointed out that it offers opportunities to all types of companies, including SMEswhich can “compete like big companies” using these tools.

TAKE ACTION AND TAKE CARE OF INTRINSICALLY HUMAN SKILLS

Taking all this into account, in their book ‘Open to Work’, Roslansky and Raman identify what they say are the “signals that really matter” in the midst of a noisy market about AI and the future of work.

This refers to the “skills that emerge and evolve, people who reinvent and adapt, companies that hire and restructureand entire industries that are transformed.

To help professionals figure out what will make them competitive “in a way that no machine can replace,” the book first points out the need to evaluate the parts of the work that can be delegated to AI and the parts that can be kept for the professional.

In this sense, the CEO of LinkedIn in Spain has indicated that the 85 percent of LinkedIn members have jobs where AI could automate a quarter of routine tasks. To distinguish which tasks are automatable and which have more value, he has referred to the intrinsically human abilities collected in the five ces of the book: creativity, curiosity, courage, compassion and communicationin addition to others such as critical thinking and humor.

Following this line, taking into account that the change is inevitablethe book also includes how users must get involved nowinstead of waiting for it to reach them. Thus, they must develop the essential human capabilities previously identified, which will accompany the professional “in any technological change.”

Finally, as Sáenz de Cenzano has also stressed, the advice is to take action by starting to test, but thinking about short adoption cycles of 30, 60 or 90 days.

For his part, Salcedo has stated that Microsoft also shares this point of view, adding that the success does not depend only on technologybut of the change management and organizational capacity.

Likewise, he has added that the future of work will go through “hybridization” that will combine the Agentic AI with human capabilities. “Change is not optional and technology does not replace people, but rather they will coexist,” he stated, alleging that, today, adapting is more important than predicting the future.

Thus, he has exemplified how to manage Microsoft’s fiber network, which covers 600,000 km, they use hybrid teams, where each agent always has a human supervisor, turning AI into an “augmentative” technology instead of a substitute.