The Adecco Group, the world’s largest staffing firm and a member of Business 20 — the business community of the Group of 20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, known as the G20 — called on leading and emerging economies to change regulations and education to adapt to the rapidly changing labor market demands of the new digital age.

“While startup businesses and innovators have led the charge in harnessing the power of the digital age, governments and regulators have lagged behind,” Adecco Group’s CEO Alain Dehaze wrote in a LinkedIn blog post. “Our business community and economies are in urgent need of the right kind of support and global policies that will better prepare our workforce for the demands of the future.”

Dehaze said digitalization, robotization and artificial intelligence are dramatically altering how we work and some low-skilled jobs are disappearing amid advancing machine. “Automation is also moving into higher-skilled areas, prompting further adaptation and transformation,” he said. “Nascent professions are requiring people to develop new skills and adopt new attitudes to work.”

“The traditional career ladder is also eroding for many, giving way to a career web, where sideways moves can be just as significant as upward promotions,” he said. “Not just the nature of our work, but the way we work is in flux.”

The G20 meets in Hamburg, Germany, this year and one of its task forces focuses on employment and education. The B20 group of businesses’ recommendations to the G20 leaders include:

• Promote open, dynamic and inclusive labor markets by removing legal and structural barriers, encouraging female entrepreneurship and creating more opportunities for women in work, and bringing immigration rules in line with the needs of business.
• Harness the potential of technological change through better education and training, entrepreneurship and innovation frameworks by cutting red tape, investing in forward-looking and country-specific skills development, and fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship.
• Create a level playing field and promote fair competition globally by properly implementing legislation at national levels, promoting sustainable supply chains, and enforcing responsible business conduct to create a level playing field across the world for human rights.

Dehaze also advocated for the following in response to the labor market demands of the digital age:

• Restrictions and regulations hampering providers of different forms of work must be lifted.
• Workers must have adequate job protection.
• Governments should introduce active labor market policies, such as training schemes, to support workers’ employability, and linking subsidies to employment measures.
• We must reassess how we think and talk about work. Too often, platforms, agency work, freelance cooperatives and the like are described as “new,” implying “old” or “traditional” labor is more stable or reliable. In fact, “nontraditional” employment relationships are becoming the new norm.

“The growing diversity of employment relationships is good for everyone,” Dehaze said. “Employers have differing priorities and requirements in this era defined by machines taking over and three generations working alongside each other in the workplace. Mothers of young children, millennials and the semiretired have disparate drivers and each group needs flexibility of choice at work to balance its priorities.”