Yann Zopf, Public Engagement, World Economic Forum, yzo@weforum.org
- The first Jobs Reset Summit launched new public-private collaborations to safeguard workers
- Georgia, Greece and Turkey joined the Forum’s network of countries mobilizing investments for job creation and skills development
- Brazil, Pakistan and Bahrain announced, respectively, training programmes for over 8 million people, new accreditation systems for training centres and new ways to equip young graduates with the skills of tomorrow
- The Forum and leaders from business, government and civil society developed tools to support planning and development of worker-protection and reskilling programmes
- Watch sessions from the Jobs Reset Summit and learn more here
Switzerland, Geneva, 27 October 2020 – The World Economic Forum’s first Jobs Reset Summit convened more than 1,000 leaders from government, business and civil society to shape a new agenda for growth, jobs, skills and equity.
It follows the Forum’s January 2020 launch of the Reskilling Revolution online platform to create better jobs, skills and education for 1 billion people by 2030. The platform hosts global, national and industry coalitions.
The Forum’s Closing the Skills Gap Accelerators are a global network of national efforts to improve skills, redeploy upskilled workers and promote inclusion. At last week’s summit, three new countries – Georgia, Greece and Turkey – joined Bahrain, Brazil, India, Oman, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates to close skills and employment gaps in their countries.
“Closing the skills and employment gap has never been so urgent and vital to our economy and society as we recover from the pandemic. The Accelerator in Greece will work with major private-sector companies and ReGeneration as the local coordinator to build partnerships that would mobilize investment for job creation and reskill our workforce for the jobs of tomorrow,” said Adonis Georgiadis, Minister for Development and Investment, Greece.
Georgia has set up a new platform, Skills Georgia, under the Accelerator, a public-private agency run as a non-profit organization that will “give the opportunity for the new generation to become more innovative; more start-up, tech and innovation-oriented with their entrepreneurial thinking,” said Tamar Kitiashvili, Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, Georgia.
Turkey is launching the Closing the Skills Gap Accelerator championed by three ministers – Industry and Technology; Education; and Family, Labour and Social Services – showcasing the cross-governmental collaboration required for rapid action on skills.
Leading policy-makers from Bahrain, Brazil and Pakistan provided updates on the efforts in their respective Accelerators to adapt to the pandemic and deliver skills to workers and out-of-work individuals. Brazil’s Deputy Minister of the Economy revealed that under Brazil’s Accelerator more than 8 million people will be trained to increase their future employability in the next two years. In Pakistan, the Minister for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resources highlighted a standardization and accreditation system in more than 10,000 training centres across Pakistan, created in close partnership with the private sector. Bahrain’s Minister of Youth showcased the efforts focused on young graduates to equip them with the skills of tomorrow.
The Reskilling Revolution platform also hosts the Skills Consortium of top online education and training providers. These companies and organizations, including Coursera, Udacity and EdX, shared their support of workers in the current context and the opportunities for further delivering on the promise of online learning and training through better accreditation and recognition by employers.
Business-led and intra-industry collaborations were also announced at the summit to create solutions for workers who can be rapidly upskilled and redeployed to a different role within their sector, leveraging both online and in-person training. For example, Crescent Petroleum shared its partnership with Edraak to provide online learning for youth in the Middle East and North Africa region, with over 240,000 people already registered.
A New Agenda for Economic Growth, Revival and Transformation
A community of leading chief economists from the public and private sectors supported the development of the Forum’s Dashboard for the New Economy. The proposed set of macroeconomic targets aims to steer the COVID-19 recovery beyond GDP growth alone and give governments the impetus to put the focus on people, planet, prosperity and institutions.
The Forum also launched a priority list of 20 of the most promising Markets of Tomorrow that are poised to generate sustainable and inclusive job creation and growth beyond today’s economic models. A network of Closing the Innovation Gap Accelerators will be taking forward investments in these new markets and innovation ecosystems.
A New Agenda for Work, Wages and Job Creation
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, released during the summit, highlighted the “double disruption” faced by workers in the face of the pandemic recession coupled with accelerated automation.
A coalition of more than 60 chief human resources officers partnered with the World Economic Forum and Mercer to create a new set of principles for the future of work through the Resetting the Future of Work Agenda.
As part of a network of Preparing for the Future of Work Accelerators across nine industries, the Consumer Industry Accelerator announced an initiative to create “reskilling and redeployment pathways” for thousands of employees. Leena Nair, Chief Human Resources Officer, Unilever, announced the collaboration with Walmart, Accenture and Skyhive. “It’s the first of its kind, non-competitive, collaborative partnership,” said Nair. The coalition is inviting companies from across industries to join the response to deal with the scale of the reskilling challenge.
A New Agenda for Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice
In addition, Jordan joined 9 other economies, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Peru, Dominican Republic, Egypt and France, deploying the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators to enhance opportunities for women in the workforce.
“The government of Jordan is committed to gender equality and women’s empowerment as an effective tool to combat poverty, hunger and diseases. Today’s launch of the Jordan Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator will help us incorporate gender as a cross-cutting theme in our economic recovery plans. It is also in line with our longstanding public-private collaboration efforts to create more equitable growth,” said Nasser Shraideh, Jordan’s Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.
The Future of Jobs Report highlighted how the impact of technology and the COVID recession on jobs has been worse for women, youth and lower-income workers. The newly launched Resetting the Future of Work Agenda highlights the win-win of diversity, equity and inclusion in this context, while the recent Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 4.0 Toolkit helps companies deploy the latest HR technologies to support this.
The Valuable 500 – committed to transforming disability inclusion through business leadership and opportunity, launched at the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2019 – announced an additional 100 members since January 2020. With 334 organizations worldwide, combined revenues of over $4.5 trillion and an employee base of 11.9 million, The Valuable 500, in partnership with the Forum, launched its Transformation Leadership Programme to build capability at leadership and C-suite level.
Notable Quotes from Leaders throughout the Summit
Environmental and social pressures have exposed the fault lines in the structure of global capitalism. Ray Dalio, Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bridgewater Associates, said: “Capitalism by its nature tends to create greater wealth gaps. There needs to be a coordinated effort to restructure how the machine works.”
Unilever’s Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope referred to COVID-19 causing a jobs crisis but urged action on two further crises, climate change and the nature of capitalism itself, “We must change the measures of success,” he said, moving beyond the preoccupation with measuring only GDP and profit as yardsticks for the recovery.
"We have a tech-savvy younger generation, and the challenge now is how do we equip them more", said Rania Al-Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation of Egypt, and a Co-Chair of the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator in Egypt.
Jonas Prising, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ManpowerGroup, described a two-speed recovery from COVID-19. “Businesses that are able to adapt are recovering quicker than those that cannot. The same is true for the labour market. People with the right skills will come back faster.”
For Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Coordination is missing in action,” he said. Yet, the only way to deal with issues of international trade, migration, climate change, employment and economic recovery from COVID-19 – even the search for a vaccine – is through multilateral cooperation.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and others called for the creation of a Global Social Protection Fund for those hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis. “About half of the world's people have no social protection or any sense of security,” said Sharan Burrow, General-Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Geraldine Matchett, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Royal DSM highlighted how technology can help to enable fairer access to jobs and that “the COVID crisis has shown us that it’s very possible to change the definition and format of work.” Royal DSM is a founding partner of the Forum’s Hardwiring Gender Parity in the Future of Work framework.
Additionally, the OECD and the Education Commission announced at the summit new studies that promote new metrics for soft skills and a new common agenda for education.
About the Jobs Reset Summit
After years of growing income inequality, concerns about technology-driven displacement of jobs and rising societal discord globally, the combined health and economic shocks of 2020 have put economies into freefall, disrupted labour markets and fully revealed the inadequacies of social contracts.
The World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit was designed around four pillars: 1) Economic Growth, Revival and Transformation; 2) Work, Wages and Job Creation; 3) Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning; and 4) Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice. Leaders agreed that balancing a crisis mindset with long-term investment will be key to ensuring a “job-full” recovery.
As we emerge from the crisis, we can proactively shape more inclusive, fair and sustainable economies, organizations, societies and workplaces. Working closely with partners around the world, the World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit aimed to serve as a key milestone in supporting a mobilization of the best of human capabilities, technologies, innovative policies and market forces in service of this new vision
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