A recent report titled The New Work Mindset by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) has identified seven new job clusters in the Australian economy through the analysis of more than 2.7 million job advertisements.

This research suggests a change of thinking, from focusing on a single job or career to thinking about acquiring and developing a portfolio of in-demand skills and capabilities.

The seven job clusters include:

1. The Generators: Occupations that require a high level of interpersonal interaction, such as those you find in retail, sales, hospitality and entertainment.
2. The Artisans: Manual tasks related to construction, production, maintenance or technical customer service.
3. The Carers: This cluster seeks to improve the mental or physical health and wellbeing of others, and includes medical, care and personal support services.
4. The Informers: The ‘behind-the-scenes’ types, this cluster involves administration, and the process or service tasks coordinators.
5. The Coordinators: They deploy skills and knowledge of science, mathematics and design to construct or engineer products.
6. The Designers: Professionals who provide information, education or business services.
7. The Technologists: Skilled workers with an understanding of and ability to manipulate digital technology.

The report also highlights that when an individual works in a particular job they gain skills that can be utilised in approximately 13 other jobs within the cluster.

So what does this all mean for HR?

Could this cluster approach be a way to identify and structure job classifications, talent mapping, succession plans, attraction and retention, and career paths to align skill sets and skill demands of the future?

Rather than utilising traditional job or profession approaches, businesses could classify roles within the job clusters and use the key skill sets and capabilities required in each to develop learning and development programs, performance frameworks and map out career progression within clusters.

The job clusters could also be used in workforce planning when analysing the existing workforce skills and capabilities against those required in the future.

This might not be a surprise, but the report states that occupations within the technologists, the informers and the carers clusters have the strongest future prospects in the employment market. Identifying now whether your business is positioned to have enough of this future in-demand capability and skill set to achieve future service delivery or production demands could be a competitive differentiator.

There is no doubt that the world of work and Australia’s economy is changing. With access to big data such as this report, HR practitioners and businesses have an opportunity to ensure they are positioned ahead of the game in regards to what is likely to be a new scale of the war for talent.