The Adecco Group supports
the four Recommendations to the
Governments of the G20 countries to
implement programmes to encourage
entrepreneurship and innovation.
Attitudes towards mobility and
diversity will also have to adjust.
Thirdly, flexibility will become more
important than ever for companies to
stay competitive. A contingent workforce
is decisive in addressing businesses’
rising demand for flexibility. The need
to make labour more supple will have
to be reflected in regulation too. Labour
market restrictions still stifle job creation
in many countries. And educational
systems that develop employable skills
through, for instance, apprenticeships,
remain sorely lacking.
Finally, technological change –
and disruption – will be central.
Digitalization has triggered a huge
automation of labour: an estimated one
in two jobs today risk being replaced by
machines. The peril varies by country
and hinges on individual governments’
policies and investments: in low wage
countries, such as China or parts of
Eastern Europe, increased automation
may even negatively impact cost
advantages. Such a background
calls for new growth models and
an “upskilling” of the workforce.
As a member of the Employment
Taskforce of the B20, the Adecco Group
supports the four Recommendations to
the Governments of the G20 countries
to implement programmes to encourage
entrepreneurship and innovation,
remove structural barriers and enact
support mechanisms to increase youth
employment participation. And we back
the initiatives to increase the female
labour force participation rate and to
assess and reduce the skill mismatch
and workforce capability gap.
We have one particularly high
priority, and that is education,
training and lifelong learning.
As digitalization and automation
advance, high quality education is
essential to boost employable skills.
Talent gaps show new skills are
needed to support economic
development. ‘Quality education’
– which we define as that able to
match skills and market needs –
plays a decisive role in a country’s
competitiveness. To ensure the
workforce meets market requirements,
it is imperative to improve co-operation
and alignment between education
systems, businesses and employers.
That includes public-private
partnerships to create the
“quality education” systems needed
to produce the skills markets require.
Talent strategies must be guided by the
concept of “employable skills” involving
structural co-operation between
governments, education systems and
businesses. Initiatives Zlike the Global
Apprenticeships Network (GAN),
a coalition of institutions, employers’
organizations and businesses,
exemplify such co-operation.
Young people also have a part to play.
They must focus on the emerging sectors,
develop soft skills and embrace mobility.
As volatility becomes the constant in
life and work, the value of soft skills like
creativity, problem solving, and empathy
becomes ever more important.
And learning does not stop the day
we leave school, apprenticeship or
university. It is a lifelong process,
involving skills being refined throughout
a career. That applies across the board:
disruption and technological change do
not spell the extinction of the historian or
classical scholar. But they, too, will have
to keep learning, or get left behind. ■
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