.
The global workforce is playing a game of chutes and ladders. Each of us starts on our own ground floor. Some start life towards the top, though most do not. In today’s economy, individuals are neither doomed to their starting ladder, nor able to stay on it if they desire to. Rather, every one of us is required to hop to other ladders – to collaborate, to iterate, to explore – to make progress.
As a result, our workforce continues to suffer. The 2016 US election reflected a widespread dissatisfaction with business as usual among working and middle class Americans that can be summed up in a word: frustration. Frustrated were the millions who felt that their economic gains were being taken from them in the form of higher prices on health care. Frustrated were the millions who feel encumbered by debt and have limited access to educational opportunities and career advancement.
The same sentiment is felt throughout the world. There are hundreds of millions of people out of work who want a job while there are millions of jobs that go unfilled due to an unskilled workforce. The jobs-skills mismatch is threatening the fabric of democracy across the globe.
The global skills gap, where the people looking for work lack the required skills for the available jobs and those looking to hire are unable to find ready talent, is the largest it has been in human history. We need a new vehicle to transport human potential from today’s ladder to tomorrow’s infinite possibilities.
We need to innovate within the workplace, leveraging the power of technology to enable a solution, gather and analyze data, and work with the public sector and non-governmental organizations to develop employee capacity. The urgency is for soft skills leadership, communication and collaboration to become common capabilities throughout the workforce.
Here’s how the doomsday story reads if we fail to meet the moment: As the global population grows to a staggering 10 billion people by 2050, an overburdened education system will falter and the absolute number of individuals that lack the necessary skills to be competitive will rapidly rise. Meanwhile the connected and educated will continue to capture value, selling and reselling to the wealthy but desperately seeking new markets where populations are expanding, not shrinking or stagnant. Major firms will want to make money by operating in Africa, South Asia or Latin America but wages in those places will have stagnated because the value an employee with few skills can provide will never justify substantial raises. Just the same, the population gets larger, less educated by percentage, and ultimately, the world ends up with a frustrated youth population that deems its future hopeless. Unemployment grows from 95 million to 500 million in short order as more people are left out of the exclusive club of critical thinkers and soft-skill doers.
Come to think of it, hasn’t this story been the seed of every revolution or global disruption caused by terrorists and insurgents?
The alternative is more compelling and can be solved through creativity and the application of simple technology solutions in the appropriate learning context to meet low skilled workers where they are, and upskill them.
Take the example of a distributor of healthcare products in the developing world. With smartphones, employees can get continuous training on the job, starting in positions that require basic skills or even experiencing immersive learning programs at the beginning of their job to get daily guidance and learning by doing. This type of learning will not only add new skills to the employee’s repertoire, it will empower them to further engage in their work and build loyalty and commitment around the firm while reducing turnover that costs firms millions in retraining and recruitment efforts. This will be particularly critical for the millions of jobs that require soft skills, ethics and collaboration.
Most of the talk around education innovation assumes that employees need to show up prepared to conquer the tasks at hand – after all you are paying them to bring value to the firm. The thinking goes that if we can create colleges, universities or vocational training programs that are better, leaner and freer then we can prepare the massive and growing population for tomorrows workforce. Spotted across the developing world are institutes, universities, conferences, programs and trainings that are designed to prepare otherwise unprepared individuals for jobs that pay a decent wage.
This logic is actually getting in the way of profit and some sectors are getting wise to this reality. There are high skilled positions that do not benefit from 4 years of a college education. Not surprisingly, disruption is coming from the tech sector. Rather than complete 4 years of college, some tech schools teach coding for 6 months at an affordable rate and build job acquisition into the program itself. Those who don’t get jobs don’t pay for the education. This feels materially similar to the vocational training model applied to high skills work (coding) but also integrates seamlessly with the jobs of the future.
Consider the prestigious rotational programs offered at many of the world’s largest firms from IBM to Johnson and Johnson and even governments like the US Department of State. In each of these places of work, high potential individuals are given the opportunity to work within different departments of the same company, hopping from ladder to ladder for two years, and developing a set of cross-departmental skills that make them more valuable as strategic thinkers and more networked across the firm.
When I founded Unleesh, I knew there was a massive problem that needed to be solved that began with the dignity of a job. Unleesh is a technology platform in the form of a web and mobile app, on a mission to solve the global skills gap. The problem is borderless and reaches every industry. Unleesh recognizes its role and responsibility as a convener of partnerships that bring together brilliant 21st century learning content, data analytics and investment in partnerships with corporations, governments, non-profits, academia, and others to make sure that every person who wants a job gets a job that they will, ultimately, earn.
By using Unleesh as a technology platform, companies, governments and NGOs can supplant the traditional expectations around job readiness and build that capacity internally and to their specific requirements. The collection of data from employee learning uncovers myriad opportunities for speeding up the learning process, upskilling workers to leapfrog into roles that they are not yet qualified for. The ability to engage populations regardless of geography opens the door for empowering women and engaging populations that have been left behind by traditional education systems.
The only resource on earth that is unlimited is human potential. No government or company can afford to be left behind.
About the author: An internationally respected entrepreneur and leader who had the idea for the workforce development technology platform, Unleesh, while sitting in a rural village in Africa during a program with another company he founded, ThinkImpact, where he currently serves as Chairman. He also serves as President of More Than Me, which is building a public charter school network in Liberia. Saul is a Truman Scholar, an Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 entrepreneur, a top 9 Young Foreign Policy Leader under 33 by the Diplomatic Courier, and a speaker for the US Department of State.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Creating Tomorrow’s Talent: Transporting Human Potential
Motivated Workforce and Staff Employees Smiling Art
January 16, 2017
The global workforce is playing a game of chutes and ladders. Each of us starts on our own ground floor. Some start life towards the top, though most do not. In today’s economy, individuals are neither doomed to their starting ladder, nor able to stay on it if they desire to. Rather, every one of us is required to hop to other ladders – to collaborate, to iterate, to explore – to make progress.
As a result, our workforce continues to suffer. The 2016 US election reflected a widespread dissatisfaction with business as usual among working and middle class Americans that can be summed up in a word: frustration. Frustrated were the millions who felt that their economic gains were being taken from them in the form of higher prices on health care. Frustrated were the millions who feel encumbered by debt and have limited access to educational opportunities and career advancement.
The same sentiment is felt throughout the world. There are hundreds of millions of people out of work who want a job while there are millions of jobs that go unfilled due to an unskilled workforce. The jobs-skills mismatch is threatening the fabric of democracy across the globe.
The global skills gap, where the people looking for work lack the required skills for the available jobs and those looking to hire are unable to find ready talent, is the largest it has been in human history. We need a new vehicle to transport human potential from today’s ladder to tomorrow’s infinite possibilities.
We need to innovate within the workplace, leveraging the power of technology to enable a solution, gather and analyze data, and work with the public sector and non-governmental organizations to develop employee capacity. The urgency is for soft skills leadership, communication and collaboration to become common capabilities throughout the workforce.
Here’s how the doomsday story reads if we fail to meet the moment: As the global population grows to a staggering 10 billion people by 2050, an overburdened education system will falter and the absolute number of individuals that lack the necessary skills to be competitive will rapidly rise. Meanwhile the connected and educated will continue to capture value, selling and reselling to the wealthy but desperately seeking new markets where populations are expanding, not shrinking or stagnant. Major firms will want to make money by operating in Africa, South Asia or Latin America but wages in those places will have stagnated because the value an employee with few skills can provide will never justify substantial raises. Just the same, the population gets larger, less educated by percentage, and ultimately, the world ends up with a frustrated youth population that deems its future hopeless. Unemployment grows from 95 million to 500 million in short order as more people are left out of the exclusive club of critical thinkers and soft-skill doers.
Come to think of it, hasn’t this story been the seed of every revolution or global disruption caused by terrorists and insurgents?
The alternative is more compelling and can be solved through creativity and the application of simple technology solutions in the appropriate learning context to meet low skilled workers where they are, and upskill them.
Take the example of a distributor of healthcare products in the developing world. With smartphones, employees can get continuous training on the job, starting in positions that require basic skills or even experiencing immersive learning programs at the beginning of their job to get daily guidance and learning by doing. This type of learning will not only add new skills to the employee’s repertoire, it will empower them to further engage in their work and build loyalty and commitment around the firm while reducing turnover that costs firms millions in retraining and recruitment efforts. This will be particularly critical for the millions of jobs that require soft skills, ethics and collaboration.
Most of the talk around education innovation assumes that employees need to show up prepared to conquer the tasks at hand – after all you are paying them to bring value to the firm. The thinking goes that if we can create colleges, universities or vocational training programs that are better, leaner and freer then we can prepare the massive and growing population for tomorrows workforce. Spotted across the developing world are institutes, universities, conferences, programs and trainings that are designed to prepare otherwise unprepared individuals for jobs that pay a decent wage.
This logic is actually getting in the way of profit and some sectors are getting wise to this reality. There are high skilled positions that do not benefit from 4 years of a college education. Not surprisingly, disruption is coming from the tech sector. Rather than complete 4 years of college, some tech schools teach coding for 6 months at an affordable rate and build job acquisition into the program itself. Those who don’t get jobs don’t pay for the education. This feels materially similar to the vocational training model applied to high skills work (coding) but also integrates seamlessly with the jobs of the future.
Consider the prestigious rotational programs offered at many of the world’s largest firms from IBM to Johnson and Johnson and even governments like the US Department of State. In each of these places of work, high potential individuals are given the opportunity to work within different departments of the same company, hopping from ladder to ladder for two years, and developing a set of cross-departmental skills that make them more valuable as strategic thinkers and more networked across the firm.
When I founded Unleesh, I knew there was a massive problem that needed to be solved that began with the dignity of a job. Unleesh is a technology platform in the form of a web and mobile app, on a mission to solve the global skills gap. The problem is borderless and reaches every industry. Unleesh recognizes its role and responsibility as a convener of partnerships that bring together brilliant 21st century learning content, data analytics and investment in partnerships with corporations, governments, non-profits, academia, and others to make sure that every person who wants a job gets a job that they will, ultimately, earn.
By using Unleesh as a technology platform, companies, governments and NGOs can supplant the traditional expectations around job readiness and build that capacity internally and to their specific requirements. The collection of data from employee learning uncovers myriad opportunities for speeding up the learning process, upskilling workers to leapfrog into roles that they are not yet qualified for. The ability to engage populations regardless of geography opens the door for empowering women and engaging populations that have been left behind by traditional education systems.
The only resource on earth that is unlimited is human potential. No government or company can afford to be left behind.
About the author: An internationally respected entrepreneur and leader who had the idea for the workforce development technology platform, Unleesh, while sitting in a rural village in Africa during a program with another company he founded, ThinkImpact, where he currently serves as Chairman. He also serves as President of More Than Me, which is building a public charter school network in Liberia. Saul is a Truman Scholar, an Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 entrepreneur, a top 9 Young Foreign Policy Leader under 33 by the Diplomatic Courier, and a speaker for the US Department of State.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
