Companies should set up portable accounts to pay for life-long learning to help workers upgrade their skills and remain employable as robots take over more jobs, Adecco Group, Chief Executive Alain Dehaze said.

As increasing automation eliminates many roles, government and the private sector should work together to fill skills gaps, while workers must become more flexible, the head of the world’s largest staffing services company told Reuters in an interview.

“If they don’t quickly reform their education system, countries will create a time bomb,” said Dehaze. “They won’t have the correct talent any more and companies will move away.”

Dehaze said its customers – employers who take on temporary and permanent staff – want more flexible and more skilled workers.

“Digital skill shortages are one of the biggest problems for many of our clients. In Europe alone there will be 900,000 unfilled vacancies by 2020 due to a lack of digital skills,” Dehaze said, citing a European Commission study.

Companies and workers must improve training to fill these gaps, he said, especially as every four years people effectively lose 30 percent of their technical skills because the environment is changing so rapidly.

Employers could either lay off existing workers and recruit new staff – an expensive exercise – or retrain them. Cutting a job can cost roughly $100,000 in Switzerland, three times more than retraining, he said.

“Our current system comes from the time of the industrial revolution and is based on permanent work contracts,” Dehaze said at the company’s Zurich headquarters.

“But the era of life-long jobs will soon be over. Society needs a new social contract.”

Up to 375 million employees globally may need to change their work category by 2030, according to a study by consultancy McKinsey & Co.

Areas like office administration and food preparation will be among the hardest hit by the rise in automation, as robots and artificial intelligence programs take over repetitive tasks.

Against this backdrop, Adecco Group has invested in training, buying General Assembly for $412.5 million this year.

To simplify career-long training, portable accounts, dubbed “life-long learning accounts”, could be created, Dehaze said.

Source: World Economic Forum