Davos deal to upskill 1 million workers

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has launched the IT Industry Skills Initiative to meet the global skills gap challenge and address job displacement arising from automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The initiative is committed to reaching 1 million people with resources and training opportunities on the SkillSET portal by January 2021.

The plan was conceived by the Forum’s IT Governors community under the chairmanship of Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco.

The founding partners are Accenture, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cognizant, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Infosys, Pegasystems, PwC, Salesforce, SAP and Tata Consultancy Services.

“We need responsive solutions and coordination from all parts of society — governments, citizens and private industry alike — to re-envision an educational system based on lifelong learning that can fully prepare workers for the jobs of the future,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

“This initiative is a clear example of industry leaders taking concerted, collective action to address a major social challenge at scale.”

According to a WEF report on workforce reskilling, one in four adults reported a mismatch between the skills they have and the skills they need for their current job. Therefore, enabling and empowering workers to transform and update their skills is a key concern for businesses and societies across the globe.

“In our dynamic world, technology has opened up many avenues for growth. However, we are also seeing how innovations such as artificial intelligence and automation can impact the workforce. It is important for all of us to recognise that without the talent we need, none of us would be successful,” said CISCO’s Robbins.

“This initiative brings together the capabilities and strengths of all of our companies to help educate the high-skilled workers needed for jobs now and into the future.

“It is our obligation to make sure that people with jobs across every industry are given the means to learn new skills and remain competitive.”

The coalition has created a free platform of online tools to streamline the process of reskilling adults. The initial iteration of the portal will be available in April 2018.

To empower people to address fast-changing skill requirements, initiative partner companies are opening up key elements of their individual training libraries into one centralised portal.

Users will have access, free of charge, to the most up-to-date, self-paced training materials from leading global IT companies, ranging from general business skills to introductory digital literacy to more advanced topics such as cybersecurity, big data or Internet of Things.

The initiative will initially target the US market, with plans to scale to other geographies and build industry and public-sector partnerships in 2018 and beyond.

Under the chairmanship of Mike Gregoire, CEO, CA Technologies, the coalition will report on progress at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

Image courtesy WEF.

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