White Paper

The Business Performance and Skills Survey (BPSS) is a study of skills utilisation from the perspective of the commercial establishment. The analyses and findings from this study will provide relevant and timely data on skills demand and skills utilisation at the establishment level for tracking and diagnostic purposes as well as to inform skills policies at the sectoral level.

There is growing recognition that migration-management strategies may prove more effective if they include expanded legal migration opportunities. But while origin and destination countries have often partnered to facilitate the movement of low-skilled workers in fields such as agriculture and tourism, far fewer partnerships focus on middle- and high-skilled labor migration. As populations in many destination countries age, and qualified professionals in some origin countries struggle to find employment in sectors such as nursing, new opportunities for cooperation are emerging. The negotiation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration has spurred new thinking about what such partnerships might look like in practice—including how to ensure migration is beneficial to both migrants and their employers, and a positive force in the development in origin countries. The compact advances a new model that may be able to overcome the obstacles that have plagued past partnerships, from high costs to dwindling employer engagement. This policy brief examines the new model of skill partnerships, as compared to more traditional ones. Crucially, instead of recruiting already qualified professionals, which raises concerns about human-resource depletion in developing countries, this next generation of skills partnerships would focus on training prospective migrants in their countries of origin, alongside peers who may never seek to migrate. This approach, the brief finds, holds significant promise but will require smart thinking about key questions of program design, cost sharing, and diaspora engagement.

This research arose from work commissioned by the Australian Industry and Skills Committee – in the form of a cross sector project looking at the need for digital skills in a range of manufacturing and related industries. The project was managed by IBSA Manufacturing, a Skills Service Organisation,1 which provides support to the following Industry Reference Committees (IRCs): Aerospace ,Furnishing, Manufacturing and Engineering, Process Manufacturing, Recreational Vehicles and Laboratory, Sustainability , Textiles, Clothing and Footwear During the course of the project, national consultations were undertaken with more than 40 representatives from large (often multinational) businesses, small and medium businesses, unions, training providers and other VET sector stakeholders. Many of the individuals involved in the consultations raised questions about how well the VET sector was prepared for the substantial digital changes impacting on the workforce and the manufacturing sector in particular. They questioned whether Training Packages were sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of the manufacturing sector as it responds to growing levels of digital disruption (or what has been termed the 4th Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0). The research undertaken to support the project, also identified a vastly greater number of reports and papers focussed on the challenge of upskilling workers for an Industry 4.0 environment, than in relation to the need for specific digital skills for manufacturing and related workers. This report synthesises the research evidence – in relation to both digital skills and the broader challenges of skilling workers for the Industry 4.0 workplace.

The Great South Coast Regional Skills Demand Profile is an outcome of the Regional Skills Taskforce – Great South Coast Region. Comprising prominent business leaders from the region, the Taskforce was established in December 2017 and chaired by the Victorian Skills Commissioner, Mr Neil Coulson. The Taskforce aimed to better understand local skills shortages, where local investment is being made, existing and future workforce training needs, and what skills will be required for local students, jobseekers and the workforce more broadly. The Regional Skills Demand Profile developed by the Taskforce notes that the Great South Coast’s industry profile reflects a highly diverse economy. Agriculture accounts for 16.1% of annual real gross value added and is a major driver of the region’s economy. Strong local and international demand has also led to major growth in food manufacturing, forestry and aluminium production industries. Similarly, the Great South Coast’s unique location is a geographic competitive advantage in aquaculture, wind generation and tourism in the region. Strong linkages across these major industries creates demand for the region’s transport, automotive, port operation, heavy manufacturing and construction industries. These sectors are important enablers of the region’s economy. Similarly, the flow of income from major industries, enabling industries, and households generates demand for services such as retail and hospitality across the Great South Coast.

It’s a race between education and technologies. Blockchain, AI and advanced biosciences promise new efficiencies and growth opportunities at a time when leading economies are struggling with weak productivity gains and, in some cases, slow GDP growth. But it’s easier said than done. Industrial age education and training systems put these economic opportunities at risk. If skill-building doesn’t catch up with the rate of technological progress, the G20 economies could lose up to US$11.5 trillion in cumulative GDP growth in the next ten years. That’s equivalent to losing more than an entire percentage point from the average annual growth rate every year over that period. For this report, we look through the lens of the future worker – from the shop floor to the boardroom, from the shop front to the back office – and we identify their evolving skills demand. We analyze the changing importance of skills to different roles and the impact of intelligent technologies. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not about technological skills. It is about cultivating the full range of skills, from the creative to the complex cognitive capabilities that the future workforce will need. Our diagnosis: Current education and corporate learning systems are not equipped to address the coming revolution in skills demand. The challenge is especially urgent for roles that are more vulnerable to dislocation through intelligent automation. The impact is uneven across economies and industries, demanding targeted interventions. Our proposed solutions: Learning with experiential techniques, shifting the focus from institutions to individuals and empowering the most vulnerable people to learn. Advances in the science of learning, paired with new technologies, allow pioneering businesses to offer new approaches to learning. The challenge? Accelerating their adoption across all organizations, large and small, and throughout education systems in the G20 economies.

The Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough (GCGP) region is a highly prosperous area, with prodigious job growth. Assessing and understanding the skills demand of the present and future local labour market is therefore of great importance to inform policy discussions about skills development at the local level. This report, commissioned by Cambridge Ahead and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, uses the Employer Skills 2015 survey carried out by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to assess the skills demand from the perspective of businesses. Analyses are conducted for four industry sectors that were considered particularly relevant for the local labour market in the region, namely Life Sciences, Information and Communications, Health and Social Work and Construction.

This paper reports on a search for the New Foundational Skills of the digital economy. How and when do evolving skills change the job market? Which skills are in demand in both digitally intensive jobs, and more broadly? Which skills retain their value over time? If such a set of emergent, critical skills exists, how do the skills interact, and what do they mean for job seekers and incumbent employees, educators, and employers? To find out, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) commissioned Burning Glass Technologies to examine skills in the job market by drawing from a set of more than 150 million unique U.S. job postings, dating back to 2007. The research identified 14 skills that have become foundational in the new economy, which converge in three interrelated groups: Human Skills, business skills, and digital skills. Human Skills have a long history of close study, so BHEF and Burning Glass are especially pleased to subject these two other major segments of the skills continuum – Business Enabler and Digital Building Block Skills – to similar scrutiny.

Digital skills are vital for individuals and national economies to prosper in a rapidly-changing world, benefiting from the opportunities of digital and remaining resilient to potential risks. More than 90 per cent of jobs in some categories now demand digital skills. Yet in 2016, just 56 per cent of Europeans had adequate digital skills for the world they live in, and 37 per cent of the workforce lacked adequate digital skills. In this project we examined the development and approach of Grow with Google, a project which operates through national programmes matched closely to the contexts and needs of individual countries, in six case study countries (Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Nigeria) in order to identify key themes and learning to support ongoing good practice in growing a digital skills ecosystem.

The future economic wellbeing and global competitive position of the UK is dependent on ensuring the country has a suitably skilled workforce. Over the coming decades, as the forces of globalisation, digitalisation and automation reshape the labour market, the nature of work itself will change, creating demand for new skills. The future UK economy will require basic digital skills from all workers and place an increasing premium on higher level technical skills and employability skills such as flexibility, creativity and problem-solving (Stormer, 20141 ). At the same time, our ageing population means that people will be working for longer, with the government investing in partnership with businesses to support and retain older workers (DWP, 20172 ), and placing an increased emphasis on lifelong learning as one of the foundations of the UK Industrial Strategy (BEIS, 20173 ). In order to ensure the population’s skills are able to meet the demands of a shifting market, we first need a clearer understanding of the scale and nature of the employability skills gap. This study addresses that gap, bringing together the perspectives of employers, educators and the working-age population to create a definitive picture of employability skill levels across the UK. The seven skills we considered were: resilience, proactivity, problem-solving