With half of its population under 25 and the unemployment rate at four-decade high, India faces an uncertain future. The question on young people’s minds: what kinds of jobs will we have? Quartz asked leaders across India’s biggest industries about that one job in their company or field that will be the most crucial in the coming decades.
From physical banking to providing contactless solutions such as digital wallets, the Indian financial services sector has undergone a sea change in recent times. The policy framework, too, has evolved to accommodate more payments banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and small finance banks. The government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) now fulfills more digital payments in India than cards and net banking. With growth in digital banking, roles that involve mitigating risk, managing cyber security, and ensuring privacy will gain prominence. Many banks have already started appointing chief risk officers.
Arvind Laddha, the India CEO of consulting firm Mercer, told Quartz:
The future of work is inextricably linked to extraordinary shifts in technology and human capital. Like all other organizations, we need to be able to embrace these changes to compete effectively. The future demands new skills and changed mindsets. Against this backdrop, two roles are becoming critical for us.
The first is the chief digitization officer, an internally-focused role that will use technology to enhance productivity and customer experience.
The second role is an organization design and change consultant, an external-facing person who would advise our clients who are transforming their organizations.
The person in this role will have to identify the right kind of talent and resources to lead business and technology transformations that our client is undertaking and help them build a roadmap for implementing changes to the organization structure, role design, workforce planning, skill set, or rewards interventions.
Both of these roles are multidimensional and require a balance of technical expertise with the ability to lead change with empathy and maturity, which could make them difficult to staff.