MAPNet

Rethinking work skills for the future of work

Project team

Project lead

Professor

Mark Griffin

Project member

Melissa

Chapman

Project member

Katrina

Hosszu

Project member

Megan

Orchard

Project member

Professor Sharon Parker

Project member

Professor Karina Jorritsma

Project member

Professor Marylène Gagné

Project member

Professor Patrick Dunlop

MAPNet overview

Our approach

To explain the deep structure of work tasks. The MAPNet approach allows organisations to identify the multitude of skills and activities that are fundamental for enabling success in uncertain and interdependent work environments.

The MAPNet framework details key skills required for employees and organisations to be successful for the future of work.

Understanding the future of work

The changing nature of work is a growing concern. Technological innovation, automation, big data, and demographic changes such as longevity are leading to substantial disruption across industry sectors.

There is an urgent need for a better understanding of future work skills and how they develop.

What is driving the change in work?

Governments, organisations, and communities are grappling with the demands of future work. We have reviewed the key trends that demand newways of thinking about skills and work requirements.

MAPNet skills

Foundation Skills:
Mastery

The foundation of MAPNet is the concept of mastery; the ability to perform core tasks with a high level of proficiency.

Transformational Skills:
Adaptivity

Adaptivity involves adjustingoneself and reconfiguring responses in a changing environment. Through adaptivity, people apply their current knowledge and skills to new situations that are more diverse and more complex than the ones they have previously encountered.

Transformational Skills:
Proactivity

Proactivity is a set of self-starting, action oriented behaviours that change the situation or oneself to
improve personal or organisational effectiveness. Two types of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) have been noted as key to proactivity; a thorough understanding of one’s work (job-related KSAs) and context relevant knowledge.

Network Skills:
Local Networks

Team work in local networks allows individuals to achieve something greater than their individual capabilities through utilising a network of skills and abilities.

Networked Skills:
Complex Networks

Modern work often requires a complex network of skills achieved through multiteam systems. Multiteam systems are defined as when two or more teams work interdependently towards shared goals.

Integration Skills:
Transformational Networks

The above skills do not function in isolation and high performance is achieved when individuals integrate transformational and network skills.

Building blocks for the future

We have defined some of the most commonly noted key abilities, which we suggest as the building blocks of future skills, as outlined by the MAPNet framework:

Critical thinking
Problem solving
Collaboration and communication
Creativity and Innovation
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) / Technical literacy
Foundational skills and STEM

Developing and supporting the MAPNet skills

The key conditions and systems that are needed to develop and support the MAPNet skills are:

Work design
Motivation
Teams
Selection and training
Leadership

To support and develop the MAPNet skills, adaption in these areas are usually required at the organisation level. However, there are also a number of opportunities for individuals to engage their own sense of agency in preparing for the future of work.