Long Life Learning: Building Future Workforce Skills
The average retirement age in Connecticut and across the country is 65.
But with advances in areas like healthcare and medicine, lifespans are extending longer.
And that may mean that our work-lives may also be extending.
That idea is behind the work of Dr. Michelle Weise, author of the bestselling book Long Life Learning.
“A longer life means a lengthening of our work lives, and that lengthening has already begun,” Weise told the crowd of more than 500 at the April 22 Connecticut Workforce Summit.
“Workers 55 and older are staying in the workforce far longer than they had ever anticipated.”
Job Changes
She added that younger generations of workers may have to contend with 20 or 30 job changes over their lifetimes.
Weise said we are also seeing a transformation in the nature of work as new technologies like artificial intelligence emerge.
“Studies are already showing that the vast majority of jobs will be impacted by this new form of generative artificial intelligence, with over 50% of our jobs being greatly impacted by Gen AI,” she said.
“We are all going to have to learn new skills at a pace and on a scale never before seen.”
Dr. Michelle Weise
Because of these shifts, Weise noted that the skills employees have to start their careers will not be the ones they retire with.
“We are all going to have to learn new skills at a pace and on a scale never before seen,” she said. “And it isn’t slowing down.”
Weise said it’s important for everyone in the workforce to change their mentality from “learn, earn, rest” to “Learn, earn, learn, learn, learn, earn, repeat, often doing both at the same time.”
‘Workforce Highway’
Part of that shift is taking a close look at our education and workforce systems to make sure everyone has the opportunity for easy access to on- and off-ramps in and out of learning and work.
“In an ideal world, we would all enter the workforce highway and be able to take one of these cloverleaf exits and get precisely what we need in order to skill up or re-skill or retool ourselves and then seamlessly re-enter the workforce highway,” Weise said.
“But we know that this does not exist in our reality today.”
Weise highlighted five principles of building a healthier, better functioning learning ecosystem for the future.
“We needed to design something that was more navigable, more supportive, more targeted, more integrated and more transparent,” she said.
Weise said people often look for a “career GPS” to help navigate and guide them to help develop their skills.
“Most of our learners today need a better understanding of the skills they bring to the table,” she said.
“We are not great as humans at articulating those skills and surfacing our attributes.”
Support Services
Weise said that technology like AI is helping people not only articulate those skills but also recommend personalized learning pathways.
Weise said that support services are critical to helping people juggle education, work, and their life circumstances.
“As many of us know who have ever tried to juggle education at the same time as working, there are so many different things that dog us outside of the classroom that make it very difficult for us to advance and pursue education,” she said.
Weise highlighted efforts in Connecticut to increase childcare accessibility.
Those support services can include everything from transportation and financial help to mental health and benefits.
Weise highlighted efforts in Connecticut to increase childcare accessibility and help more women re-enter the workforce.
“Part of this challenge that we have ahead is to begin to understand what pain points we might alleviate in order to help people re-enter and feel like they can be successful in the workforce,” she said.
Right Skills, Right Time
Weise said it’s also often difficult to get access to learn the right skills at the right time.
“Targeted education often tends to be the big challenge as we think about workforce issues, as we think about skills gaps,” she said.
Weise said there are more than a million different credentials flooding the education and labor markets.
“If we just create just sort of a one-size-fits-all program, you can see how someone who is seeking to skill up will struggle.”
Weise
She added there’s a disconnect between the language of education and the language of the job market.
“How is a person who is thinking about skilling up supposed to understand which thing they should be actually going for as they try to make their transition into the labor market?” she said.
She said that’s why targeted education is important, especially as the needs of the workforce vary across different regions of the country.
“If we just create just sort of a one size fits all program,” Weise said, “you can see how someone who is seeking to skill up will struggle depending on where they find themselves in the country.”
Human Skills
Beyond credentials and technical skills, Weise said it’s critical to target education in human skills like problem solving and communication.
“We’re going to have to figure out ways to deepen and help our people practice those human skills for the future of work,” she said adding that
As more workers focus on developing career skills, Weise said it’s important to integrate earning and learning.
“We cannot expect people to forgo wages in order to build up their new skills for the future.”
Weise
“We have had a real disinvestment over time from our employers, from building those new skills,” she said.
Weise said that according to the Wharton School of Business, 44% of employers nationwide offer zero upskilling for their workforce.
She said employers are equally responsible for building and integrating that learning.
“We cannot expect people to forgo wages in order to build up their new skills for the future,” she said.
Principled Ecosystems
Weise said that the fifth principle of building a better learning ecosystem is transparent hiring.
She said that when there are too many requirements and restrictions on hiring, the talent funnel narrows.
“So how do we diversify and open up opportunities?” Weise asked.
She said many employers in Connecticut have already made strides in this area with a shift to more skills-based hiring.
“How do we knit this all together in a more easily navigable way?”
Weise
“Think about different kinds of outsourced apprenticeship models, where we mitigate the risk on the part of the employer to test out talent for the future,” she said.
As the workforce continues to transform, many of the jobs of the future don’t even exist yet.
Weise said it’s important to think about building a principled ecosystem for the future workforce that we want to see.
“How do we knit this all together in a more easily navigable way?” Weise said.
“So that when they are facing that career shift in those 20 or 30 job changes to come, they know exactly who to call, where to go, which learning experience to acquire in order to make progress and move forward.”
The 2025 Connecticut Workforce Summit: Developing Future-Ready Talent is a collaboration between CBIA, the Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy, Governor’s Workforce Council, ReadyCT, Social Impact Partners, Connecticut Department of Labor, State Department of Education, Capital Workforce Partners, Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board, Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board, The WorkPlace, Workforce Alliance, and the Connecticut Technical Education & Career System, and made possible through the generous support of General Dynamics Electric Boat, with additional support from Dalio Education, Verizon, and the University of Hartford.
RELATED
EXPLORE BY CATEGORY
Stay Connected with CBIA News Digests
The latest news and information delivered directly to your inbox.
CBIA IS FIGHTING TO MAKE CONNECTICUT A TOP STATE FOR BUSINESS, JOBS, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH. A BETTER BUSINESS CLIMATE MEANS A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR EVERYONE.