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By: Iván López, Global VP Corporate Sales at ODILO
The adoption of technological innovations in the workplace offers significant time savings, efficiency gains, and improved productivity. However, like any change, it also brings challenges. One of the most apparent needs is for professionals to adapt to the use and management of these advances.
As a result, FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete) is the norm and a primary concern for workers across all sectors. And with good reason. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report, approximately 40% of the skills we consider essential today will be obsolete by 2030. Faced with this complex scenario, the winning approach is to turn the fear of FOBO into a driver of evolution and resilience within the company.
To do this, organizations must commit to learning as an opportunity for staff growth amid change, which in turn requires addressing several considerations. First, recognize FOBO as a collective phenomenon. It is not an individual or temporary fear. Recent studies indicate that one in five workers experiences it, a figure that continues to rise. This can be easily identified through tools such as internal surveys and open conversations. These mechanisms identify gaps in the team’s skills and lay the foundation for designing strategies and action plans that prevent fear from paralyzing the team.
Recognizing FOBO is the first gesture of leadership, demonstrating a company’s commitment to its employees and their personal and professional growth amid an uncertain future. But recognition alone is not enough. What is truly transformative is accompanying that recognition with continuous learning. The famous upskilling and reskilling programs are no longer an alternative; they are a strategic necessity. Providing professionals with training aligned with their role and corporate strategy means leveraging human capital, making it a relevant and active player in the company’s development and growth. Constantly updating technical and cross-functional skills, from technology to project management, allows team members to continue adding value to the organization and keeps it competitive. Investing time during the workday in training is an investment in sustainable growth and a genuine commitment to the team.
Considering the importance of continuous learning, personalization is another additional step to combat FOBO in a truly effective way. Recognizing that each professional has their own starting point, personal interests, and a learning pace that may not align with colleagues’, training itineraries tailored to these realities make learning a more enriching and motivating experience. The latest cutting-edge approach to corporate training uses flexible platforms tailored to each professional’s profile that provide intelligent recommendations based on their motivations and abilities. Additionally, they enable real-time measurement of training impact, with individual progress metrics that show how acquired skills align with the company’s real needs. In this area, training technology plays a vital role. The most advanced edtech enables professionals to be the architects of their own development, fostering autonomy without sacrificing strategic alignment, and transforming FOBO into curiosity, ambition, and pride in continued growth.
But if there is one thing that makes the difference in the transition from fear to empowerment, it is committing to training as a cross-departmental process with high potential for integration and the creation of a common culture. This translates into a commitment to intergenerational collaboration and reverse mentoring to strengthen internal cohesion. Having younger employees teach senior employees about new digital tools and trends, and having veterans share their knowledge with newcomers, goes beyond symbolism. It is an effective method for reducing gaps and generating invaluable two-way learning. The key is to design these programs with clear objectives and defined roles, making the company a facilitator of these encounters and ensuring that participants understand that innovation and learning are a shared project. In this way, we ensure that knowledge flows in all directions and that experience is complemented by the freshness of new perspectives, generating extraordinary results.
With all of the above clear, the final step in ensuring the training program’s success is to foster a culture of proactive experimentation. Learning cannot be an optional add-on. It must be an essential part of everyday office life, present in meetings, project development, and moments of innovation. In this sense, it can be helpful to create spaces where team members can try, fail, and learn: workshops, sessions to test new tools, etc., learning from mistakes and the involvement of professionals in the organization. In this way, we transform FOBO into a source of creativity, motivation, and resilience, and initiate a virtuous cycle in which learning is associated with progress rather than risk.
Overcoming FOBO is the last great challenge facing professionals in all sectors. Fortunately, the responsibility is not theirs alone. It is a shared call to action in which the company must provide real opportunities for development, and the employee must make an active commitment to their own learning, ensuring that they are capable of evolving. Transforming FOBO, the fear of obsolescence, into innovation and education is the most reliable way to build strong, adaptable teams that are prepared for any future challenge.