To close America’s chronic middle skills gap, U.S. employers have to partner much more actively than in the past with local community colleges. Due to waves of disruptive automation, the nature of middle skills jobs is evolving much faster than educators’ abilities to change curriculum.
Surveys of educators (pdf) and employers (pdf) reveal the disconnect behind this partnership’s underperformance and underscore the need for businesses to take the lead in making it more relevant and effective in three areas: training and education aligned with industry needs, commitments to hire community college students, and sharing of data on the supply and demand for talent.
This report by Tap’d Solutions focuses on the term “hybrid working” and how it has become part of our vocabulary, a key Google search term and in cases, a reason why we have stayed or left our job. Hybrid working is not new, even though some commentators seem to think it is. It was in our midst long before the pandemic hit yet, in most cases, it was ad hoc and informal in our approach to it.
But now in this post-pandemic world, many job roles and functions have been accelerated by pandemic lockdowns into a “hybrid first” working style expectation by current employees and applicants. Attempts to force workers into the office for the majority or all of their time has been often met with resistance and has soured organisation cultures and engagement levels.
Nearly ten years on from Frey and Osborne’s 2013 study which warned that nearly half of jobs in the US were at high risk of automation, this report by the Resolution Foundation concludes that low investment and low productivity are more of a concern than robots taking jobs.
This new report by Economist Impact argues that human-centric strategies are needed for businesses to drive sustainable business growth. The Magnetic Workplace Barometer gauges confidence both today and in five years’ time across three main pillars: productivity and infrastructure; employee engagement; and culture.
This report from Deloitte explores how the path towards net zero is giving rise to a new ‘green collar workforce’ and predicts that this could create more than 300 million new jobs globally by 2050. It notes that with around one quarter of global jobs at risk from unchecked climate change, policy action to upskill and retrain workers can realise the potential of economic growth and drive greater equality as the world economy shifts to a low emissions production system.
KPMG’s 2022 CEO Outlook draws on the perspectives of 1,325 global CEOs to highlight their three-year outlook on the business and economic landscape. It finds that attracting and retaining talent is a top operational priority and that, while hybrid/remote working has had a positive impact on hiring, collaboration and productivity, the majority of CEOs want employees back in the office.
This global survey of 900 business leaders and 1,800 knowledge workers explores how organisations taking steps to enable flexible hybrid work are performing against four key pillars that make hybrid working successful: tech empowerment, connection and collaboration, flexibility and fluidity, and trust and empathy. The report concludes that businesses find it most difficult to meet employee expectations in relation to work culture and attitude.
This special report looks at the issue of trust in the workplace and finds that employers have emerged as an anchor of trust and stability. 78% of employees see their workplace as a safe space for debate and turn to it as a primary source of community, before their neighbours and religious organisations. Edelman argues that this gives rise to a new employer mandate – to leverage the powerful force of employees to restore societal trust from the inside out.
Jabra’s report finds that belonging, motivation, productivity, trust, work-life balance, and mental well-being are all positively impacted by increasing employees’ ability to control where and when they work. The report indicates that leaders must find ways to maximise employee autonomy while addressing the social, health and technological barriers associated with hybrid working.
Slack’s new snapshot suggests that today’s workplace is centred around flexibility and that, without it, there is a high risk of employee attrition. It reports that fully in-office workers report lower employee experience scores compared to hybrid and full-time remote workers and that employees with rigid work schedules are three times more likely to look for a new job in the next year.
