Thanks to Cristóbal Cobo Romaní in Flickr.

NOTE: This is the third in our recent “let’s share the findings from all those OECD reports with each other (and the world)” series. Again, the content is not likely scintillating, but it’s important to us, and we’re happy to let you in on it.

The OECD Designing Local Skills Strategies Report (2009) focuses largely on questions of balance in locally designed workforce strategies: balance between short- and long-terms needs, balance between training and placement, balance between meeting the needs of people, firms, and communities, and balance between workforce players – private, non-profit, and a diverse collection of government agencies at different levels.

Authors Francesca Froy, Sylvain Giguère, and Andrea Hofer offer case studies of the following communities:

• Shanghai (China)
• Michigan (U.S.)
• Choctaw Tribe (Mississippi, U.S.)
• Mackay (Australia)
• Malmö (Sweden)
• New York City (New York, U.S.)

While, other communities are also cited in the narrative, these communities’ launched initiatives representing what the report calls balanced strategies, the authors’ recommended approach. Balanced strategies focus simultaneously on:

• Attracting and retaining talent
• Integrating disadvantaged groups
• Upskilling those in employment – though in most cases, this was the most difficult strategy because of its complexity (designing opportunities for working adults, often with families).

The report concludes by recommending that local workforce actors seeking to implement effective (and balanced) approaches focus on five key strategic issues:

• Access to relevant data and information. Local actors need to understand their “skills ecology” and its impact on the wider economy to be able to design appropriate policy and program interventions.
• Balanced and long term strategies. It is tempting for local actors to focus on only one or two strategic objectives. Focusing on all three areas is more difficult, but also promises to deliver more substantive impact over time.
• Batter mapping of skills provision, for example through “career clusters” or “career ladders.” This provide a focus for otherwise disjointed systems and creates opportunities for individuals to advance in meaningful ways. However, careers advice is a key (and often lacking) component of this approach.
• Building strong relationships with employers. While necessary to ensure effective connecting of supply and demand, public-sector and non-profit entities can play an important role in emphasizing long term needs and suggesting changes in workplace practices in ways that round out employer’s tendency to focus on short-term needs.
• Look to the future and anticipate change. Skills strategies should be subject to regular review and change, and should build toward local areas of “flexible specialization” (sometimes called workforce or talent competencies, or clusters of talent) that encourage the development of local talents and skills that are specific enough to make the community distinctive, but broad enough to avoid dependency on narrow industries or occupations.

Not rocket science, but it does take determination – people who do this work rely on persuasion and trust, not hierarchy.

Leadership and Governance Really Matter

While the report does not emphasize leadership and governance as a theme, the frequency with which the difficulty of this work is noted in the narrative is striking.  Meeting many diverse public and private needs, balancing the short and longterm, collaborating with large and changing networks of partners absent a structure, meeting shared national policy needs and in a local (and sometime divergent) context, developing and allocating resources fairly and in ways that deliver results – this is complex work all over the world, and speaks to the level of management expertise and leadership talent it takes to do well.

What’s our strategy for developing the workforce workforce?

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Thanks to NJ.. on Flickr

Last week we were drafting a set of policy recommendations for a project. We’d drafted an introduction that named demographics, technology, and the competitive landscape as among the most significant domains of change in the workplace during the past decade. At that point I realized how many times I’d seen this collection of words and phrases in a bulleted powerpoint list, or similarly glibly treated as if the meaning (and implications) of these change were self-evident.

We decided to say what we meant. Here’s the list we came up with in answer to the question “How is the workforce landscape different today than ten years ago?” We know it’s not complete, but it’s a start. We’d love to know your thoughts.

Key Workforce Trends

“Growth minus Jobs.” While economists debate the causes and implications of the trend, job growth following the last two recessions has been far lower than what was expected. In our current “job-less recovery,” the seven million private sector jobs lost in the 20 months between December 2007 and August 2009 are returning an anemic pace (and many of them do not pay family-sustaining wages), while labor force continues to grow by 1.3 million people per year.

“Millennials and Boomers Sandwich Gen-X.” For the first time in our history, it is commonplace for four or even five generations to occupy the workplace at the same time – challenging tradition hierarchies, management practices, and raising serious equity issues as “baby boomers” delay retirement and firms resist taking on new (younger) full-time employees who are far more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse than their more senior colleagues (and peers).

“Wanted: Life-long Learners.” The demands on all workers to develop new and more diverse skills throughout their working lives – as the baseline required for good jobs increases – raises complex challenges for employers and government (who pays?), difficult decisions for workers (“Do I train for two years in hopes I get a job at the new Google facility?”), and disrupts assumptions about what it means to be a student (non-traditionals are the new traditionals).

“Anywhere, anytime, any device connectivity.” We’re only at the beginning of understanding how connecting people to data, information, and each other will change the way we live work and learn, but the implications for workers – who’s talents can be tapped globally, firms – who’s value chains now include customers and competitors, and communities – which will thrive based their uniqueness and desirability, are significant (and mindbending).

“Show me the three Rs (Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle).” Questions about the sustainability of our consumption-based economy and its role in climate change are causing a massive rethink of public policy around energy, water, food systems, and how these and other natural resources are used in industry and commerce. This is already changing what it means for workers, firms, industries, communities, and nations to be competitive in the new new economy.

These shifts show no evidence of slowing. Public policy must also change with the times.

And today, there are few areas of public policy more important to the nation’s economic competitiveness than the skills, ingenuity, and health of its 139-million person workforce.

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Students, educators and others can access syllabi, lecture notes, audio and video for almost every MIT course offered today, and over 50 million have done so. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of education has done a meta-analysis that shows that students who take all or part of their classes online generally perform better than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction (results are statistically significant).

The Web Makes it Possible to Support Learning and Work in New Ways

The way society thinks and learns is changing faster than, well, the speed of digital transmission. This opens doors to new ways of helping students and workers meet education and training demands in the midst of constant innovation and increasingly tough competition for jobs.  But there are still
those who cannot imagine the extent modern technology foretells for work and learning.  They point to social media tools like FaceBook and Twitter and oddly-named collaboration tools like wikis and blogs and wonder about, if not challenge, their relevance in today’s talent landscape.

The Web Helps People Help Themselves and Each Other

Yet 85% of college students use FaceBook – 3.85 million users.  Of these, 60% log in every day, 85% at least once per week, and 93% at least once per month. These figures will pale with recent new accessibility for high schoolers.  And while much of the usage is social, it also includes tracking and collaborating homework assignments, arranging study groups, and more.  Adults are also heavy internet users: According to the Pew Internet and American Life project, over 1/3 of adults have participated on online social networking, and 69% of all Americans have used the internet to cope with the recession, including finding jobs and ways to upgrade their skills. (This includes using social networks to land employment, an increasing phenomenon in today’s economic climate.)

It’s Not About The Tools Alone, But the Tools Accelerate Broader Social Change

The truth is, like the Commodor 64 and Atari, some – if not all – of these social networking and collaborative platforms are likely to be replaced by more powerful, agile, and ubiquitous versions themselves. But their legacy will remain, meeting demand for transparency, collaboration, and the ability to teach and learn any time, any place, on any subject imaginable, at increasing speed and diminishing cost to the end beneficiary.

We’re Only At the Beginning

There likely will always be a place for traditional work and learning systems, but not without integration of online tools, resources, and even social networking platforms that add to the richness of the educational experience through easier-maintained relationships with educators and peers.  The future of work and learning is today, it includes online tools, content, and networks, and there is no going back.

Lisa Baragar Katz
@katz_lisa

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