OECD Skills Week - the day after
I was a panellist at the OECD Skills Week on June 26. I've shared my contribution below.
Session 6: Business as usual? A spotlight on the role of employers in local skills systems
In this session, we unravel the opportunities and challenges of engaging employers and employer organizations in shaping the future of local skills ecosystems. To drive local productivity and innovation, employers need to identify skill needs and roll up their sleeves to provide hands-on training through apprenticeships and on-the-job training. In this session, local governments and private actors will discuss building sustainable partnerships in an uncertain economic climate.
"Thank you, Tilde Ussing , for introducing me and having me in this session.?
Let me analyze the specific topic of this session: How can employers be engaged in local skills ecosystems? How do we drive productivity and innovation?
I am speaking from experience implementing projects in different countries in the EU-27, the UK, Ukraine, and South Africa. ?
I have learned there are significant differences between areas where unemployment is below the friction level of 3% and areas where unemployment is skyrocketing.
In the area where I live, Brainport Eindhoven in the Netherlands, the talent pool is empty. We are looking for 70,000 new employees over the next eight years. This is not only for talented people in the IT industry, Microelectronics, Batteries and Photonics, but also for finding teachers, doctors, chefs in restaurants, bike repair staff and so on.?
I have also learned that the situation is entirely different in other regions. In South Africa, for example, 70% of the labour force under 30 years old is unemployed. Could you let that sink in for a moment? 70% of the people under 30 years have no work. They have no income. They are unbankable. What does that mean for local skills ecosystems, productivity and innovation??
Let's dive a bit deeper.
In EU-27, we have 22M employers, of which 90% are Micro SMEs employing less than 20 employees. This percentage varies about plus-minus 5%. Sweden has 86%, and Bulgaria has 97% of all its companies being Micro SMEs.
Micro SMEs represent more than half of the labour force in EU-27, which is over 110 million people. Let's concentrate on them for a moment and first examine them from a policy perspective.
Policymakers tend to talk in policymaker language: 'EU has to re- and upskill 105M people before 2030'. But have we asked ourselves if employers know what skills they need? Have we ever asked ourselves if we know what skills we have ourselves? Have we ever wondered if micro SMEs have the HR skills to understand our discussion? I leave the answer to you.
In our projects, we learned that 'skills' are an easy concept to discuss at the coffee table but hard to grasp while running a company or doing work.?
So, how can we offer a solution to engage employers in local skills ecosystems and help them improve productivity and innovation??
The quick answer is that we need to think in two extremes. We need to consider how to help ONE employer and ONE employee, and AT THE SAME time, we need to prepare ourselves to help ALL employers and ALL employees. If we do not accomplish this, Europe will never be able to re- and upskill 105M people before 2030.?
领英推荐
SMRT.bio developed the Social Architecture ( socialarchitecture.io) to analyze the customer journeys of each key stakeholder in the labour market before developing our technology. We used the architecture to define the 'First Principles of Personal and Economic Development' and concluded that we should concentrate on matching people with Work, Education, and Entrepreneurship. That's our mantra: Work, Education, and Entrepreneurship.
So, who are the key stakeholders? In our opinion, they are Employers, Individuals, Education, and Regions. I'd like to introduce each.
Employers: SMEs and Micro SMEs are the change agents for innovation and transformation. Of course, we also include big corporates in our projects, but they have already built an infrastructure to manage their talents, skills, and innovation. SMEs and Micro SMEs have not. They have no platform for personal and economic development. Twenty million companies are left out.?
SMRT.bio created a service that allows Micro SMEs to use our platform without any HR skills. We use AI to define the skills they need and AI to rank all applicants automatically. And they can do it in less than 2 minutes—no hassle. This creates a level playing field for ALL employers.?
Individuals: employees, students and unemployed. What is the big problem they face? People have no understanding of what skills they master let alone what skills GAP they have. You can only solve a skills gap when you know your skills and what is required. It is as simple as that. And this is true for 110M people in EU-27.?
So, how do we solve this? By offering games to profile their passions, strengths, and skills, we can automatically create a full CV in a few minutes. Simple!?
Education: TVETs and Universities offer courses and publish them in their catalogues, which are offered from portals using 20-year-old tech. As a visitor, you need to digest what they present before deciding what course to enrol in—assuming that you know where to find the institution in the first place.?
This is not a recipe for solving the skills gap at scale and speed. So, we developed matching tech to automatically feed users personal learning advice. How simple is that? Just click for advice, and you are ready to go.
Regions: We include municipalities, provinces, or, in EU-language NUTS-3 regions, regions with an average of 400K-800K inhabitants in our rollout. We also invite sectors and special interest platforms to join. You would expect them to take the lead in economic development, but have you ever seen them publishing 'Future Jobs' to allow people to apply for these jobs today??
That's a pity, as they could generate skills gaps today and offer personal learning advice now to prepare their users for future jobs in, let's say, 9, 18, or 36 months. Why don't they do it? Because they lack a platform to articulate their policy goals in actionable services.?
In the real world, all four stakeholders dance to their own music. They dance in their own silos and talk in their own echo-chambers. Resulting in an 'imperfect market' in which temp agencies, recruiters, consultants, and HR staff make a ton of money. We can save these cots and re-channel them to what is needed most: CONSTANTLY allow all stakeholders to grow and improve. This is not only relevant for the big corps but also for the micro SMEs and their staff.?
Lifelong learning deserves a place at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid, not at the top, where it is reserved for the happy few.?
We need to use technology to take down the silos between Employers, Individuals, Education and Region and build a 'Talent Utility' where you can plug yourself into a utility for personal and economic development. That utility should help all of us to mobilize ourselves and the assets we have to make a decent income today and tomorrow.?
Join us in building that utility.?
Thank you."
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