Digital Divide and Employment: From Job Disruption to Reskilling Workers for the Future World of Work

Digitization profoundly changes the world of work and redefines it. Digitization at the workplace is a reality of the last decade, and the pandemic accelerated the pace of employment reform, causing greater flexibility of the active life model, but also increased vulnerabilities. Digitization statistics capture, through new indicators developed by Eurostat, the incidence of information and communications technology (ICT) services and products on jobs – skills, work intensity, risks, tasks and responsibilities, working conditions, remuneration, and professional career. Starting from the digital intensity in companies and the adaptation of the workforce in the pandemic, we analyzed the gaps between EU countries and companies’ size. We highlighted the companies’ digital reform status in the pre-pandemic and the changes made during the pandemic on the labor force, in order to outline the employment model and the content of jobs, as directions for the continuation of the post-pandemic digital transformation. The results obtained indicate significant and growing gaps between countries regarding the dynamics of changes and the achievement of expected results, as well as the different degree of readiness of the business environment and of individuals to respond to the challenges of the irreversible digital transformation of work, to strengthen the new post-pandemic employment model. Also, the results confirm that the concerns for digital performance, as a resilience factor of the company during the pandemic, were a priority not only for large companies but also for SMEs, including those that had a low level of digital intensity and from the lower-performing countries. As the pattern of changes, companies, during the pandemic period, had as their main orientation the adaptation through digitalization to the limitations of the measures for carrying out the activities imposed by COVID-19, with a preponderance on ensuring the skills for their own employees and less for increasing the share of employees with ICT specialization, which indicates that the adjustments were minimal and aimed at ensuring the conditions for remote work. The speed of digital evolution was facilitated by the level of economic development expressed by gross domestic product (GDP)/capita in PPS and the level of digital reform before the pandemic as strong advantages for building post-pandemic economic resilience. Based on the results obtained, recommendations were made for policy measures at company level to ensure a resilient employment model and close the performance gaps in the digital transition of work.