31 Pivotal talent: The ultimate prize Automation of routine tasks encourages the increased specialism we see in the four worlds. This suggests that those workers with the critical skills that organisations need will become the ultimate prize – whether they are full ‑ t ime employees or contract workers. These are the ‘pivotal’ people – those that contribute outsized and absolutely crucial value to their organisation. Finding and keeping these pivotal people will be a huge challenge in every world. They will be hard to find and difficult, in a loyalty-light world, to keep. And in the hard ‑ d riven Red and Blue worlds, the risk of losing pivotal people to burnout or early retirement (comfortably funded by the high rewards they’ll command) will be a constant worry. That’s why organisations will need to pay careful attention to the employee value proposition – the reasons why these extraordinary people were attracted to working with them in the first place. Adaptability – the key to the future One clear lesson arises from our analysis: adaptability – in organisations, individuals and society – is essential for navigating the changes ahead. It’s impossible to predict exactly the skills that will be needed even five years from now, so workers and organisations need to be ready to adapt – in each of the worlds we envisage. Inevitably, much of the responsibility will be on the individual. They will need not only to adapt to organisational change, but be willing to acquire new skills and experiences throughout their lifetime, to try new tasks and even to rethink and retrain mid ‑ c areer. Governments and organisations can and should do much to help: easing the routes to training and retraining, and encouraging and incentivising adaptability and the critical and increasingly valued skills of leadership, creativity and innovation. PwC survey of 10,029 members of the general population based in China, Germany, India, the UK and the US – base all those who are not retired 8,459 74 % are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain in order to remain employable in the future.