2020 Global Talent Summit Report

EDUCATION & WORK POST-PANDEMIC 2020 SUMMIT REPORT

PRESENTED BY

EDUCATION & WORK POST-PANDEMIC 2020 SUMMIT REPORT

PRESENTED BY

Copyright © by Diplomatic Courier/Medauras Global Publishing 2006-2020 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. First Published 2006. Published in the United States by Medauras Global and Diplomatic Courier. Mailing Address: 1660 L Street, NW, Suite 501, Washington, DC, 20036 | www.diplomaticourier.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: 978-1-942772-07-1 (Digital) ISBN: 978-1-942772-06-4 (Print) LEGAL NOTICE. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form—except brief excerpts for the purpose of review—without written consent from the publisher and the authors. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication; however, the authors, the editors, Diplomatic Courier, and Medauras Global make no warranties, express or implied, in regards to the information and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions.

EDITORIAL. The articles both in print and online represent the views of their authors and do not reflect those of the editors and the publishers. While the editors assume responsibility for the selection of the articles, the authors are responsible for the facts and interpretations of their articles. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication, however, Medauras Global and the Diplomatic Courier make no warranties, express or implied in regards to the information, and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions.

PERMISSIONS. None of the articles can be reproduced without their permission and that of the publishers. For permissions please email the editors at: info@medauras.com with your written request.

COVER DESIGN. Cover and jacket design by Marc Garfield for Diplomatic Courier.

4 | OCTOBER 2020

EDUCATION & WORK POST-PANDEMIC 2020 SUMMIT REPORT

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ANA C. ROLD MANAGING EDITOR SHANE SZARKOWSKI ASSOCIATE EDITORS ALLYSON BERRI ADAM RATZLAFF MERCEDES YANORA REPORT EDITOR & AUTHOR WINONA ROYLANCE CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS KELLY RYAN BAILEY ALLYSON BERRI MEGAN CHO ALEXANDRA HARANGUS LIRONNE ALICE KORET BEN NELSON MATT SUNBULLI PUBLISHER DIPLOMATIC COURIER | MEDAURAS GLOBAL WASHINGTON, DC

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 5

THANK YOU THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS & SPONSORS FOR THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT 2020 & THE WORLD IN 2050.

HOSTS

PARTNERS & SPONSORS

6 | OCTOBER 2020

CONTENTS EDITOR’S NOTE

WELCOME | ANA C. ROLD...........................................................................................................................08

FEATURES

SKILLS FOR THE PRESENT, NOT THE FUTURE | BEN NELSON.......................................................................................................................................................12 SHIFT FROM DEGREES TO SKILLS | KELLY RYAN BAILEY........................................................................................................................................14 WHY EDUCATION MUST PIVOT TOWARDS SKILLS | ALLYSON BERRI................................................................................................................................................16 WILL COVID-19 REMOVE BARRIERS TO REMOTE WORK? | ALLYSON BERRI................................................................................................................................................18 TRENDS SHAPING WORK FROM HOME | MATT SUNBULLI..............................................................................................................................................20 POST-PANDEMIC URBAN PLANNING | ALLYSON BERRI...............................................................................................................................................28

STUDENT VIEWS

OVERHAULING SYSTEMIC HIRING PRACTICES | MEGAN CHO.......................................................................................................................................................32 REFLECTING ON THE NEEDS OF WORKING PARENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD | ALEXANDRA HARANGUS...........................................................................................................................33 HOW COWORKING SPACES CAN HELP BUILD LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND ENABLE GLOBAL INCLUSION | LIRONNE ALICE KORET...........................................................34

SESSION REPORTS WINONA ROYLANCE

FLATLAND: COMPETING FOR TALENT IN A GLOBAL VIRTUAL WORK ENVIRONMENT...................................................................................................................................................38 MINDSETS OVER SKILLSETS: THE SHIFTING NATURE OF PROFESSIONAL READINESS...........................................................................................................................................................46 LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: THE ROLE OF URBAN CENTERS FOR AN ALL-REMOTE WORKFORCE.....................................................................................................54 SCALING THE PARENTAL WALL: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF EMPLOYERS IN DEALING WITH THE NEEDS OF WORKING PARENTS..........................................................60 GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 7

WELCOME

BY ANA ROLD

8 | OCTOBER 2020

W

elcome to the 2020 Post-Global Talent Summit report. This year’s “Back to School” edition of the summit was held on September 9-10, 2020 just as nations worldwide were grappling with how they could return to learning safely after massive closures kept almost a billion students out of school in early March.

This year’s summit was held completely virtually, in partnership with the Minerva Project, on Minerva’s unique learning and convening platform Forum.

I want to thank Ben Nelson, the CEO and Founder of Minerva, for his partnership and vision, and the entire Minerva team, faculty, and students who have contributed countless hours to producing our event this year.

I also want to thank our speakers, moderators, our Summit MC Kelly Bailey, and our partners, including: Diplomatic Courier, Emsi, WISE, Salzburg Global Seminar, Karanga, Zurich International School, Gallup, Science at Home, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Learning Economy Foundation.

Eight years ago, GTS set out to answer a couple of seemingly simple questions: How do we prepare for the disruption that rising automation will bring? How do we equip everyone with the lifelong skills and competencies needed for a 21st century economy?

Earlier this Spring, I was invited to participate at Minerva’s commencement and summit, Consequent. It didn’t take long to realize that Minerva students are unlike other students. I left Consequent inspired that this generation of life-long learners is truly going to be robot-proof. And this is why I was delighted to have some of them with us at GTS as speakers and as contributors to this post-summit report.

Our teams produced four mini-summits across all time zones, looking at all the important issues currently on the minds of policymakers, employers, educators, students, and parents: how will we weather the COVID-19 crisis together? And how are we going to build a resilient, future-proof education-to-work pipeline after the pandemic?

This report, expertly captured by our senior editor Winona Roylance, highlights the key ideas and presentations from the summit sessions.

We are also thrilled to feature guest contributors as well as three essays from our own Education Correspondent Allyson Berri.

As always, we welcome your views and questions at editors@diplomaticourier.org and look forward to seeing you at next year’s summit in person.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 9

FEATURES

SKILLS FOR THE PRESENT, NOT THE FUTURE

BY BEN NELSON

W

hat are the skills needed for the future? This is a question that permeates most conversations or reports about the future of work. There is a general consensus that teaching STEM subjects is not enough but that we should rather focus on STEAM. We even agree that training for technical skills should be complemented by acquiring human (or “soft”) skills.

We pour over lists of jobs that are slowly declining and others that are emerging. And we all—in our different fields as educators or employers—scramble to identify and train for the skills that the next generation would need to thrive in the future.

All this assumes that we can predict the future, an assumption with scant evidence given our rather terrible track record. Even when scientists predicted the inevitability of a virus like COVID-19, we failed to predict its societal, economic, and even environmental impact. And worse yet, we failed to prepare for it.

Our hope is that we do not do the same with education, skills, and talent. Rather than trying to predict the jobs and the skills of the future, let us admit that we do not know and have no way of knowing what they will be. A well-circulated claim is that 65% of primary school-aged children will probably end up working in jobs that do not exist. A BBC investigation found that this number is closer to one-third. While this could be an interesting point of discussion, the number that we should be more interested in is that according to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder in 2018, 45% of HR managers say they are “unable to fill open positions because they cannot find qualified talent.” In 2018. This is the present—actually the past—not the future. And while some are still debating what 21st century skills should be, a fifth of that century has already passed.

This brings us to the fact that we are actually doing a pretty lousy job of preparing our youth today for the jobs of today.

12 | OCTOBER 2020

While we may not know how many jobs will disappear or what kind of jobs will be created in the future, we do know that the overwhelming percentage of jobs have already changed.

Our world is and will continue to rapidly evolve, suffer from extreme turbulence, and continue to become more and more interconnected. It requires people (both old and young) to continually learn, unlearn, and relearn. And if we are to have any future, it requires them to do so while also acting for the global good.

So, rather than trying to guess which skills are needed for the future, let us focus on nurturing talent that can thrive in turbulence, in disruption, and in evolution. Let us train minds for complex systems that will always be bound by unsolvable constraints. Let us focus not on unidimensional teaching decisionmaking but ethical, sustainable decision-taking. Let us train for critical thinking that can discern fact from claim and can argue based on logic rather than assumptions. And let us get comfortable with looking at the world in shades of grey, rather than rigid ideologies.

We still hold discussions about the skills needed for the 21st century, as if this were forward-looking. With a fifth of the century already gone, we better start working urgently on building skills which impact society today. ***** About the author: Ben Nelson is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Minerva, and a visionary with a passion to reinvent higher education. Nelson started Minerva in 2011 with the goal of nurturing critical wisdom for the sake of the world through a systematic and evidence-based approach to learning. Over the past 8 years, Nelson has built Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute into the most selective and effective university in the United States, and has developed a business to share Minerva’s unique approach with other like-minded institutions, corporations and governments.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 13

SHIFT FROM DEGREES TO SKILLS

BY KELLY RYAN BAILEY

T

his year’s Global Talent Summit convened over 70 distinguished luminaries to discuss challenges and solutions related to reimagining the future of education and work in the post-pandemic era. Day one was dedicated to skills; qualifying and verifying skills, changing hiring practices to focus on skills, and the proxy of a degree or certification. Although these challenges are not new, they are especially prevalent given the millions of individuals in the U.S. and globally that are unemployed and looking for work.

My journey into the world of skills began at a subsidiary of Randstad based in New York City. I placed IT consultants for three major financial institutions (Bank of America, BNP Paribas, and Citigroup). My days consisted of meeting with hiring managers to understand their needs and working with my team of recruiters to find people that matched those needs. More often than not, hiring managers would not know what they needed and after getting them to finally communicate a list of hard or technical skills, they would always ask for an advanced degree as well. I learned very quickly that the person with the right mix of technical and human skills—even if they did not have the degree requested or lived in the preferred location—would almost always be hired, and it was my job to convince the hiring manager to interview them and continue the process.

The problem was that after a hiring manager would agree to hire the consultant, the human resources department got involved to finalize the process. That included posting the job to their applicant tracking system and the candidate submitting their resume online. In almost all cases their resume would be rejected because it did not meet the requirements of the job posting. If I had not been involved to interject, that candidate would have never made it past the robot.

Fifteen years later and although a few organizations, like IBM and their New Collar program, have made concerted efforts to focus on skills and not degrees, the majority have not innovated. Most em14 | OCTOBER 2020

ployers are still concerned that they cannot find the qualified talent needed for their open jobs and that candidates with degrees no longer have the foundational skills they expect. Most people are unsure how to communicate the skills they have gained through a multitude of experiences. And most educators are struggling to communicate what skills they are teaching. What is causing the continued miscommunication between employers, employees, and educators when we all agree that skills-based hiring and learning is the key?

Many believe the skills miscommunication is due to the high cost of time and technology to adopt skills-based hiring and learning practices. A coalition of employers, education organizations, and technology providers has recently formed to tackle this challenge. Building off of the work of Concentric Sky, Credential Engine, Emsi, and others, the Open Skills Network was formed to accelerate the shift to skills-based hiring and learning by establishing a set of open, machine-actionable skills libraries. With coordination from BrightHive, support from Walmart, Western Governors University, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, this coalition also hopes to develop shared technology and toolsets to eliminate further barriers of implementation of skills-based hiring and learning at scale.

The Learner Employment Records (LER) movement is eliminating the risk of hiring candidates by creating trusted and verified records that can be shared digitally. The Velocity Network Foundation is one such player that has created a nonprofit consortium of global industry leaders that govern an open source platform. Once again, the focus on open source technology to reduce barriers of implementation and enabling large scale adoption across the hiring and learning ecosystem.

Skills-based hiring and learning is not only more efficient and effective, but also removes bias in the hiring process. The Open Skills initiative coupled with the continued development of Learner Employment Records (LER) gives us hope that we are just on the horizon of a true shift to an equitable hiring and learning environment. ***** About the author: Kelly Ryan Bailey is currently the Global Skills Evangelist at Emsi, the Founder & Host of the ‘Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby’ Podcast, and the Director of Operations at The Scone Pony. In her role at Emsi, she focuses on facilitating the change to a skills-based hiring and learning economy through open skills data standards, innovative products and services, and Global initiatives and partnerships.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 15

WHY EDUCATION MUST PIVOT TOWARDS SKILLS

BY ALLYSON BERRI

I

n San Francisco’s bustling Mission District, they can be seen delivering falafel. In hospitals, they can perform MRI analysis, and on Wall Street, suggest bets and predict economic policy. They can even backflip and stick the landing better than your average professional gymnast. Whether we like it or not, robots are infiltrating every field of the modern workforce, leaving education stakeholders scratching their heads about how to best prepare people for a rapidly changing employment landscape. One 2013 study estimated that 47% of current jobs will become automated within the next two decades. A 2017 report found that a third of American workers may have to pivot careers because of developments in AI over the next dozen years.

One thing states can do to prepare for what seems to be an uncontrollable onslaught of automation is reshape their education systems. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity for policymakers and other education stakeholders to rethink every aspect of modern schooling. At the 2020 Global Talent Summit (GTS), a virtual forum where leaders from a variety of industries met to talk about the future of work and education, many asked how K-12 education could better prepare students for the workforce. Again and again, GTS speakers commented on how education should be re-geared to match an emphasis on skills in the workforce.

As many workplaces are changing rapidly with the advent of new technologies such as AI, employers are placing more emphasis on transferrable skills than on college degrees. As knowledge earned from college degrees becomes outdated, employees are looking for versatile “soft skills” such as leadership or creativity. The education sector, however, has not made similar changes, and thus hasn’t been able to effectively prepare students for the workforce. “When you have an entire 16 | OCTOBER 2020

K-16 that’s geared not to [skills] and suddenly you ask people to pivot…one way to do this equitably is really to redefine what we’re doing in [K-16] education,” said Sujata Bhatt, a senior fellow at Transcend Education and GTS 2020 speaker.

There are many ways schools can pivot their curriculum towards a job market that is increasingly focused on skills. Eschewing assignments based on memorization will help students prepare for a world where up to 50% of the facts that they memorize today will no longer be relevant tomorrow.

Incorporating curriculum that expands beyond college prep can also prepare students for the modern workplace. In certain schools in Kuopio, Finland, a rich arts-based curriculum helps expose students not only to art institutions in their community, but also lessons on healthy relationships and environmental sustainability. And in the LRNG program, an online education platform operating in the U.S., badge accreditation helps students master specific soft skills, such as conflict resolution, and verifies the achievement with a digital badge.

Further, project-based learning is something schools can implement to match an emphasis on skills in the workplace without reworking their entire curriculum. By working on projects, students learn teamwork and time management—soft skills that will better prepare them for the projects they might tackle in the workplace. Additionally, projects can help students garner research skills and technical abilities, such as working with a specific type of software or coding.

As the education sector transforms over the course of this pandemic, it must pivot to accommodate the fast-paced changes of the modern workforce. Education can help students prepare for today’s workforce by foregoing memorization assignments, helping students acquire soft-skills, and teaching through project-based learning. Perhaps this oft recommended focus on skills in the classroom will help ensure that today’s students are not replaced by tomorrow’s robots in the workforce. ***** About the author: Allyson Berri is an Education Correspondent and Contributing Editor for Diplomatic Courier.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 17

WILL COVID-19 REMOVE BARRIERS TO REMOTE WORK?

BY ALLYSON BERRI

B

ack in March, when many of us swapped boardrooms for Zoom rooms and suit sets for sweatsuits, journalists started imagining a future where remote work became as common as water cooler gossip. In April, up to half of American workers were working remotely, and 60% of these remote workers said they preferred working from home. In June, the computer software company Ciena found that a little more than two thirds of British adults expected to continue working from home after the crisis was over. And in early February, when local governments in China started encouraging remote work, millions of Chinese workers found themselves working from home for the first time.

There are many potential benefits to a future where the “new normal” includes working regularly in pajamas. Working from home can cut lengthy commutes completely, reducing emissions. Remote work can also be beneficial to parents trying to balance work and family responsibilities. With so many considering the perks of a permanently out-of-office workforce, remote work was a central topic at this year’s Global Talent Summit, a virtual forum where leaders from a variety of sectors met to discuss the future of work and education.

At the 2020 GTS, during a discussion on remote work, Diana El Azar, Senior Director in Strategic Communications at Minerva Schools asked, “Is the barrier to enter into the…privileged workplace lower?” Her question targeted a central issue within the remote work debate. Many wonder whether the widespread transition to remote work will make office jobs more available to a wider range of employees. However, the realities of remote work can help indicate whether this outcome is even remotely likely. Currently, only 37% of American jobs could be performed remotely; a European report estimated that the same percentage of jobs could be done at home across the EU. 18 | OCTOBER 2020

Further, whether companies will make remote options available to more prospective employees also depends on how much they are to invest in remote work. Companies might not be willing to invest in the technology needed to help remote workers be successful. For example, firms might need to purchase specific software to help workers collaborate remotely, but might not see the purchase as benefitting their whole workforce.

Additionally, hiring and recruiting people remotely might prove incredibly difficult, given hiring and tax laws both internationally and between different areas of the same country are different. Additionally, whether the pandemic will make remote options available in office jobs also depends on the availability of remote positions after the pandemic. The history of remote work makes its longevity in a post-pandemic world questionable at best. After all, companies have been trying to make remote work “work� for almost forty years.

However, over the years corporate giants such as BestBuy and IBM have conducted experiments with remote work that have ended in widespread returns to the office. In 2009, 40% of IBM’s 386,000 employees across 173 countries were working from home, but by 2017, thousands were called back into the office. A BestBuy remote work project that began in 2004 was halted in 2013 over concerns that it gave employees too much freedom.

Ultimately, as with many things during this pandemic, we are left to wait and see what the future of remote work will hold.

However, despite its many benefits, the odds that remote work opportunities will make office work available to a wider variety of employees remains slim. Past failed experiments with remote work alongside prohibitive upfront costs for employers make it likely that office work will remain for those able to commute for their 9-to-5. ***** About the author: Allyson Berri is an Education Correspondent and Contributing Editor for Diplomatic Courier.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 19

TRENDS SHAPING WORK FROM HOME

BY MATT SUNBULLI

S

ince March, millions of Americans have been working from home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The swift action taken by employees at the behest of their employers has saved lives all the while offering them increased flexibility and the ability to work on their own terms.

On the other hand, remote work has revealed that many companies lack critical infrastructure and policies needed to support employees working from home. Additionally, they also reveal an increasing need to prioritize diversity and inclusion efforts in order to maintain equity gains in the workplace.

Fishbowl, a social network for verified professionals, has increasingly served as the “virtual” hallways of companies, allowing us to run surveys and gain unique insight into the emotional, mental, and financial strain they are experiencing.

As to be expected, professionals need more support than ever. In this report, we highlight three key trends that employers should be aware of as they develop policies. And, we make five recommendations on how employers can best support their employees through this difficult time.

Done right, employers can use this time to learn from their employees, develop policies that promote a thriving work environment, and set a precedent of flexibility and strength for the future.

REMOTE WORK TRENDS Professionals are working “longer” hours than before, burnout is inevitable. Working from home has directly impacted professionals’ working hours, and not for the better. A survey of Fishbowl’s professional communities, which included employees at companies such as IBM, JP Morgan, Facebook, McKinsey, Google, Edelman, Nike & thousands of others, revealed that 55.05 percent of employees are working more hours from home. In the same survey, 1 out of 5 respondents reported working an additional 10 or 20 | OCTOBER 2020

more hours than before the pandemic. When breaking down the data by industry, Management Consulting had the highest percentage of saying they work more hours with 61.4 percent.

These findings aren’t novel; for some time now the 40-hour work week has been a myth. However, now remote work has blurred professionals’ work-life boundaries. Professionals are tethered to technology all day long and have lost the ability to distinguish between social and work time. In addition to knowing no bounds, another possible contributing factor to working longer hours is fear.

Now more than ever, employees are scared they’ll be laid off. In a survey of Fisbowl’s professional communities conducted at the height of the Coronavirus Pandemic, 54.06% of professionals answered that they believe Coronavirus will result in layoffs at their company. Today, that fear has been realized; 54 million Americans have filed for unemployment claims and insurance.

As revealed by another Fishbowl survey, professionals simply cannot keep up this pace. When asked about the mental toll Work from Home (WFH) is having on them, 68.7 percent of respondents (from 8 different industries) indicated they were experiencing burnout. And, this was especially true for professionals working in industries such as tech (where 74.27% of respondents are experiencing burnout), advertising and marketing (where 73.19% are), and management consultants (where 71.45% are). Interestingly, healthcare workers had the lowest percentage of respondents indicating that they were burned out (at 55.79%). Still, even across industries, the majority of professionals are experiencing burnout because of working from home.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 21

Companies have a responsibility to resolve this issue for the mental, and physical, health of their employees. Burnout is not just mental or emotional; it’s physical. Research from Harvard Business School suggests employees are more likely to get sick, feel the physical manifestations of stress, and suffer from more serious illnesses like heart disease and high blood pressure.

Additionally, if these trends continue, employees will soon face the economic repercussions of employers struggling to stay motivated. Productivity will decrease as employees burn out, but health costs will skyrocket. The same Harvard Business School study revealed that burnout costs between $125 billion and $190 billion every year in healthcare costs. If employers do not take steps to protect the mental well-being of their employees, the economic and physical impacts of burnout will be catastrophic.

22 | OCTOBER 2020

Parents struggling to juggle professional and childcare responsibilities. Professionals with children are also struggling in the new, remote workplace. Now, parents are not only expected to work and take care of their children; they must do both tasks simultaneously.

In a Fishbowl survey back in March, we explored the impact of this new lifestyle on employees with kids. When we asked if they have been willing to juggle working from home and childcare, a staggering 62% of the professionals who responded said “no.”

Further, breaking down the data by gender reveals a divide in who is taking on parenting responsibilities. 46.23% of men reported being able to juggle work and watching children, and only 25.14% of women answered the same way. Even in 2020 and during a global pandemic, household responsibilities are not being shared equally.

A more recent Fishbowl survey, from June, reveals the consequences of this inequality. We asked professionals: has the Covid-19 pandemic, and the associated disruptions to childcare, school and home life, led you to consider leaving your job or scaling back your hours? And, 21.82% of women reported having already left their job or scaled back hours, while only 17.72% of men responded the same way. When who takes care of the kids is gendered, who chooses to leave the workplace will also be.

These figures might, and probably will, change as stay at home orders continue and parents must do childcare on their own. Certainly, parents will be impacted by whether K-12 schools remain closed this fall (a measure which a majority of teachers support) or reopen.

Regardless, whether parents decide to leave or remain in the workforce will have a large impact on household incomes. Parents lose roughly $30–35 billion in income due to the high cost of ECE (early care and education) which forces many to leave the workforce or reduce their work hours.

On a macroeconomic level, the data reveals that the workforce will change and be impacted. If more women than men elect or are forced to leave work, there will be a drop off in gender diversity at companies. This is especially concerning for industries which are already struggling to recruit women. The exodus will also have a devastating financial impact on employers. The cost of onboarding new employees is not cheap. Onboarding costs are estimated to range from 5.8 percent to 213 percent of employees’ salaries, depending on the job and employee skills.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 23

Companies need to change their cultures to support working parents. Without these changes, the number of employees, particularly (as the data indicates) female employees, who leave the workforce will only increase, especially as schools potentially remain closed this fall. Since working from home and parenting is extremely difficult, employers should work to assist their employees with children in any way they can.

Employees leaving cities for cheaper locations. Employers must also consider the possibility that working from home will become permanent. And, if this does happen, they should expect to see their employees relocating.

This July, Fishbowl asked its users if they are considering moving to cheaper locations. And, 47 percent responded that they are either thinking about moving or have already done so. The results varied by region, with residents of housing hotspots like San Francisco and New York City being the most likely to consider moving. Otherwise, however, the data was not gendered and did not vary by age. Major (and expensive) cities will see a major drop in population size if the workforce stays remote.

Employers should plan for their workforce to stay online and digital for the time being, but they should also consider the long-term impacts of working from home. If a sizable amount of employees moves away, the company’s culture will certainly be affected. This is more important than you might assume. Queen’s University Centre for Business Venturing collected and analyzed data to find that organizations with a strong culture also had: 24 | OCTOBER 2020

-

65% greater share-price increase 26% less employee turnover 100% more unsolicited employment applications 15% greater employee productivity.

The impact of a strong, tangible, and exciting company culture will not only influence employees’ emotional state and productivity, but also the financial success of the company.

Companies must work with their employees to create a culture driven by productivity and inclusivity, even if those employees are working from far away. Employers should also make space for discussions about remote working permanently and its impact on the company. WFH might not be the right long-term call for all companies or employees, especially given the emotional, physical, and cultural impacts outlined above.

RECOMMENDATIONS During this difficult time, companies need to support their employees by creating cultures driven by sustainability, compassion, and flexibility. To help employers start this discussion, here are five recommendations on how to offer support: Adapt to your employees’ work from home lifestyles. Almost overnight, companies discovered they have hundreds or thousands of satellite offices in the form of employees’ homes. While there’s no one easy solution to the challenges WFH poses, it’s essential that you provide your employees with ways to communicate across these “satellite offices.” Tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack are great for getting work done, but where do your employees go to ask questions they may have otherwise done in your office hallways?

That’s where tools like Facebook Workplace can be effective in providing an intra-company for employees to chatter and ask questions. You can also elect to engage your employees on platforms that they trust and where they are already present.

Apps like Fishbowl have company bowls where your employees are likely already communicating and asking questions.

Engaging and communicating with employees in these channels helps build trust with your employees and establishes you as an empathetic employer supporting its people.

Now, with so many ways to digitally co-work (via video or text), there are also many ways to connect and talk more socially with your teams. Establish a social Slack channel or Google GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 25

Hangouts channel to discuss life changes and check in. Also, consider scheduling remote social events, like a weekly zoom call, with your team. If the company offered in-person, office perks (like free lunches or opportunities), find ways to bring those back remotely too. These steps will make the workplace (even if it is remote) feel friendlier and less transactional.

If employees do choose to relocate to other cities, consider creating smaller branch offices where two or three employees can work together in a space.

Increase communication and transparency with employees.

With so much uncertainty in the world, with the pandemic and state of the economy, it is important to be as transparent as possible with your employees. Eliminate uncertainty whenever possible even if this means having uncomfortable conversations about potential layoffs or company changes.

Also, create a space for honest and direct communication, which will allow you to listen to your employees and their concerns. This could be forums, individual check ins, or even anonymous surveys. However, you do it, make sure you are getting feedback on what your employees want and need from work.

Promote a sustainable and manageable work-life balance.

Creating a social and flexible culture will help encourage employees to socialize, but it is also important that they spend time offline and away from their screens. Create policies to encourage breaks during the workday and normalize spending time offline and taking whole days off. With the pandemic and spending so much time at home, employees might feel increased pressure to work longer hours, but you should ensure them that this is not necessary.

Consider those who might need extra support. Remember that not all people are experiencing the pandemic in the same way. Parents especially might need extra flexibility around scheduling during the school year. And, whenever possible, try to work with your employees to find solutions, rather than assuming what works for you will work for them.

Also, continue to prioritize diverse perspectives in the workplace especially during these difficult times. Make sure the remote work environment stays just as inclusive as the office.

Put employees first. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, make compassion a priority.Even if you can’t understand what 26 | OCTOBER 2020

another person is going through exactly, practice kindness and empathy. Humanize your workplace and create an environment for employee and employer relationships to exist beyond the bare minimum. Check in when a coworker doesn’t seem themselves and find ways to express your appreciation throughout the day.

Remotely, it is more difficult to pick up on facial expressions or tone, so make a point of being as clear and encouraging as possible. Right now, everyone can use a little extra support. As an employer, you have the opportunity to provide it.

While this list certainly isn’t all there is to helping your employees through these difficult times, it can be a start. A healthy, flexible, online culture, transparent communication, encouraging a work-life balance, and practicing compassion are all crucial to helping your employees stay mentally and emotionally healthy during this time. The data may suggest that employees are struggling, feeling burnt out, and stressed, but by taking steps to put your employees first, and listening to them, you can help curb these trends. ***** About the Author: Matt Sunbulli is CEO and Co-founder of Fishbowl, a new social network that connects professionals to have candid and relevant conversations about workplace topics. Matt was previously Co-founder and CEO of Social Amp, one of the first companies adopted into Facebook’s Marketing Partners program, which was acquired in 2012 by a global marketing company part of the Dentsu Aegis Network.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 27

POST-PANDEMIC URBAN PLANNING

BY ALLYSON BERRI

I

t was the country’s first public park, spread across almost 800 acres of land fit squarely within the city’s grid system. At the time, it was thought that such a massive green space would be beneficial to both human and environmental health, and the park’s success led to a movement to democratize green spaces across the country. Indeed, New York City’s Central Park was a turning point for green space in the United States. But perhaps most fascinating in the current moment is that America’s first park is the result of pandemic illness.

Historically, pandemics have prompted many of the changes associated with modern cities. After a 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia killed over 10% of the city’s population, the mayor initiated emergency funding to clean the gutters.

Philadelphia’s efforts were “a harbinger of urban planning reforms,” and over the next 50 years cities would implement sanitation departments and garbage removal. During the 1850s, American cholera outbreaks prompted the development of city public health and urban planning agencies, the likes of which paved the way for the development of Central Park in New York City. By the 20th century, outbreaks of diseases like typhoid and influenza spurred tenement reform and led to the development of urban planning.

Seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many are asking how the virus might change urban spaces. At the 2020 Global Talent Summit (GTS), a virtual forum where thought leaders from a variety of sectors discussed how education and work are changing for a post-pandemic world, many noted that COVID-19 has offered opportunities to change urban centers for the better. Many voices in urban planning and beyond have offered ideas for how the pandemic might change city life.

“Something tells me ‘second-tier cities’ will come out of this stronger than maybe the mega cities,” Sebastien Turbot, CEO of eko6 and GTS presenter offered. “…[Second tier cities] will come out having proven that they’re more resilient than their bigger sisters.”

28 | OCTOBER 2020

Other voices in urban planning have identified specific features of urban life, which are likely to change as a result of the pandemic. Architectural solutions like modular construction, a method which involves assembling factory-built components on site to quickly build structures, will come into play. Some think that this prolonged period of social starvation might lead cities to develop more community-oriented spaces, such as parks or promenades. Others think that large gathering centers, such as sporting arenas or shopping malls, will be redesigned to accommodate social distancing.

However, others wonder if cities will change at all after the pandemic. “I broadly don’t think there are going to be as many long-term changes coming out of this pandemic as we think there are right now,” Jody Kelman, Director of Product Management at Lyft and GTS speaker argued. And even if there is change in the aftermath of COVID-19, some wonder if urbanists are focusing on the right changes when they consider post-pandemic city planning. In an article for Curbed, journalist Alissa Walker argues that many plans for urban reform that have emerged during the pandemic reflect pre-pandemic urban agendas, which primarily benefit affluent white communities. Walker notes that open streets and more green space won’t magically result in urban equality. To address the systemic issues that have led to disproportionate COVID-19 deaths in Black and Latinx communities, urbanist proposals for better cities in a post-pandemic world must consider racial, economic, and environmental inequalities. ***** About the author: Allyson Berri is an Education Correspondent and Contributing Editor for Diplomatic Courier.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 29

STUDENT VIEWS

OVERHAULING SYSTEMIC HIRING PRACTICES

BY MEGAN CHO

A

s a fourth-year student set to graduate into an uncertain and dynamic world of work, I—like many others in my generation—may need to reinvent myself more than seven times throughout my career. Instead of preparing for and staying in a relatively linear progression, many of us emerging professionals will need to adapt to roles that do not yet exist, while frequently learning and “unlearning” along the way. Despite these projections, narrow hiring pipelines, and largely-unchanged educational institutions have led to systems that cater to a specific subset of the population while further fueling the skills dissonance between higher education and work.

As I heard echoed throughout the Global Talent Summit, it is ultimately these systems that are in need of radical restructuring or circumnavigating, especially as we think about how to rebuild in a post-COVID-19 world. Even the best EdTech products cannot bridge the digital divide, and diverse candidates in biased hiring pipelines would not achieve true representation—in other words, we’re only as good as the quality of our underlying systems.

This idea inevitably led us to more questions; How do we actually make our systems more equitable? Should we focus on bottom-up or top-down initiatives? What feedback loops are most critical? While a 90-minute session is only enough time to scratch the surface on these nuanced topics, I realized that collectively arriving at these questions is a critical step towards more actionable outcomes. Listening to each panelist chime in about the tangible things they are building in response made me hopeful that our thoughts wouldn’t just remain in the session, but would continue to be a catalyst for action going forward.

At the end of the session, I was also left to ponder on new questions. Stemming from the contributions of multiple panelists, I’ve been thinking about how we might identify and amplify the voices that were “not in the room” and view equity as a necessary lens to reimagine our systems, rather than viewing it as an add-on. As I wrap up my time at Minerva and transition to the workforce, I’ll continue to reflect on these insights and bring more individuals into these conversations with the hope that, ultimately, our dynamic environment becomes one full of opportunities rather than barriers.

32 | OCTOBER 2020

REFLECTING ON THE NEEDS OF WORKING PARENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD

BY ALEXANDRA HARANGUS

S

omething that I have been giving a lot of thought lately is mental health during this pandemic. With many voices having argued for parents, and especially mothers, to make themselves a priority in order to be able to better care for their children, this seems more difficult now than ever. If separating employees’ personal life from their professional one was a blurry line before, this line has almost evaporated now, with many parents seeing themselves obligated to multitask and perform both roles simultaneously.

In response, working parents’ emotional and intellectual loads have increased exponentially and keep doing so every day on which home office and homeschooling have to coexist. I notice it daily, living in a 6-month long quarantine environment in Argentina, either by seeing parents working on their laptops while looking after their children playing outside and by overhearing tired parents and children fighting, or by seeing my manager’s kids showing up on calls.

The fact that this session was so very personal for many of the speakers made it more insightful. One takeaway for me, as I am slowly joining the club of working adults, is that there is a need for less stigma—offering benefits to working parents by allowing them to make their workload more flexible and accepting a helping hand from employers.

Parents should feel that they can take down their professional veil, as one of the GTS speakers, Courtney McBeth put it, and showcase that they are parents in addition to working professionals. We are seeing more children in meetings, and this has helped make life with children less taboo, which will increase intimacy among co-workers. While I am not a parent yet, I would be happy if the world I am bringing my future kids into is one that’s glad to see them jump in front of the camera while I am in a virtual meeting.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 33

HOW COWORKING SPACES CAN HELP BUILD LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND ENABLE GLOBAL INCLUSION

BY LIRONNE ALICE KORET

C

OVID-19 is sending shockwaves through the labor force, changing norms, and creating possibilities that some workplaces never considered adopting before. Many people are being told that they would be working from home potentially permanently, or at least in the long run. But working from home is not for everyone. I imagine all the working parents with screaming toddlers counting the days till their office opens up again. People miss catching up with their friends over coffee in between meetings. And some people’s work cannot become remote.

However, the pandemic is diverging work norms, normalizing what used to be considered a “fringe” way of work: digital nomadism. I have been immersed in this lifestyle for the last two years. And I see the many opportunities it holds for society both locally and globally.

Let’s first look at the local level. People miss people, and that makes perfect sense since belonging is a basic human need.

But this thirst can be quenched by reimagining the workplace norms. I am currently based in London, and have been working from co-working spaces worldwide as I study in different countries through Minerva Schools. You may be surprised to hear that I feel like I belong to a community. Coworking is a fantastic solution that more workers should consider adopting.

Shared workspaces can offer both a community and physical infrastructure while maintaining social distancing guidelines.

Community members get powerful internet, a quiet space, new opportunities to expand their professional network, make new friends, and consume unlimited coffee, obviously. Employers on the other hand can significantly cut “dead weight” from renting offices, buying equipment, and investing in infrastructure that is no longer deemed relevant.

34 | OCTOBER 2020

The wonderful thing about coworking spaces is that they can exist anywhere. The model already has a strong presence in urban centers, keeping cities relevant. But we should probably start to see more of these spaces created in “second-tier cities� as well. This shift will be extremely valuable for workers migrating from cities due to the high cost of living, especially through a model that grants access to coworking spaces everywhere. For coworking to become mainstream, providers should consider different business models that emphasize affordability and accessibility.

There are significant opportunities at the global level as well.

By removing the constraints of location and promoting remote work, employers can create a more interconnected world and welcome diversity. I cannot emphasize how powerful, diverse knowledge is. At my work I regularly use platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, hiring skilled designers, data scientists, and content writers from all over the world, mostly from developing countries. It is clear how COVID-19 could promote more equal opportunities in terms of creating jobs. But only as long as more companies adopt this approach, independently or through mediating platforms.

COVID-19 hit the world hard and fast, leaving the labor force out of sorts. But I believe that it is vital to use this time to see the local and global opportunities that emerge from this new normal and customize existing tools to meet the basic human needs of belonging and a place to work (shelter) while promoting more opportunities for diversity and equality. ***** About the authors (in order of appearance): Megan Cho is a student at Minerva Schools at KGI, Class of 2021. Alexandra Harangus is a student at Minerva Schools at KGI, Class of 2021.

Lironne Alice Koret is a student at Minerva Schools at KGI, Class of 2021.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 35

FLATLAND COMPETING FOR TALENT IN A GLOBAL VIRTUAL WORK ENVIRONMENT

W

ith the job landscape trending towards a global virtual work environment, finding the right talent in this continuously shifting ecosystem has proven difficult for organizations and employers. Indeed, with the unprecedented arrival of a global pandemic suddenly seeing to a forced shift in new remote work models for industries across the board, the ability of current employers, employees, and jobseekers to adapt to this new digital environment will undoubtedly reveal whether or not we are prepared for a truly global virtual work environment.

How are we going to build a more resilient, digital-focused education-to-work pipeline after the pandemic? How will employers qualify and verify talent in a virtual world abundant with disorganized data and misinformation? And as connection to the office weakens, how will employers continue to develop talent, enhance work culture and upskill? These were the questions that speakers attempted to answer at the virtual 2020 Global Talent Summit.

KEY TAKEAWAYS The education-to-work pipeline has become “datafied.”

While access to a potential employee’s background, qualifications, badges, and skills has become easier than ever before for employers as the education-to-work pipeline continues to rely more heavily on data and technology, the sheer amount of aggregate data on potential hires in addition to employers’ general inability to accurately determine whether or not a potential employee’s badges actually signal their readiness for the job have created a new set of issues in finding and hiring the right talent.

We’re working with aggregate information about individuals that is neither meaningful nor actionable. While an abundance of general-level information on an individual’s background— such as prior work experience, university degrees, and certifications—may seem to check all of the necessary boxes for employers, in reality this aggregate information only tends to represent human heuristics and trends in hiring practices rather than a potential employee’s actual capacity to successfully fill his or her new job role.

In fact, a study conducted by the University of Florida regarding the connection between prior work experience and attrition found that contrary to employers’ expectations that little time 38 | OCTOBER 2020

spent in previous job roles would also reflect time spent in their new role, there was nearly zero correlation between a new employee’s length of average time at prior jobs and the amount of time spent in the job they were eventually hired for—demonstrating that many of the things employers have traditionally found to be clear signals of a good hire may actually be a case of bad intuition.

We need methods to sort through misinformation and unnecessary data. In addition to the ambiguity of aggregate information, being able to verify this information—and sort through the fact and fiction of it all—can prove difficult. Relying on sources such as an individual’s LinkedIn profile, outdated transcripts, and unverified badges can lead to an inaccurate profile of a potential hire, and may even lead to dangerous non-inclusive and non-diverse hiring practices. Even when a potential hire’s information has been verified, it can be difficult to determine whether or not this information is an accurate reflection of a hire’s set of real-world skills.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, focusing on skill-based hiring can prove unsuccessful as employers continue to rely more heavily upon keywords and patterns in the data in a way that can make them blind to other assets—or disadvantages—a potential employee may have to offer that hiring algorithms would not be able to pick up—such as soft skills.

We need to be paying closer attention to things outside of the data. Beyond degrees, certificates, and badges, the more unquantifiable soft skills necessary to succeed in nearly any job role—such as someone’s ability to be agile and resilient, for example—ultimately prove to be much better determinants as to whether someone will make a successful employee or not.

Therefore, it is crucial that we focus on building a more robust profile about individuals that includes not only someone’s formal written achievements, but also include who they are as a person and how they operate in a fluctuating environment full of novel opportunities and challenges.

It is hard to determine whether or not badges, certificates, and degrees are an accurate representation of a person’s skills.

With thousands upon thousands of badges, certificates, degrees, and accreditations tied to potential employees in today’s job market, determining the quality of the program that produced the certification—and whether or not an individual still possesses the competency supposedly earned through the acGLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 39

creditation of such a program—can provide particularly difficult for employers when looking for new talent.

More difficult than verifying a badge is being able to understand the information payload within the badge itself. When looking for new talent, it is crucial that employers understand not only what badges an individual possesses but also what those badges represent in terms of the skills that were attained.

Similarly, they need to understand the providence of the badge, who issued the badge, and how the badge came to be.

It is difficult to determine whether a badge or certificate accurately certifies a set of obtained skills—and not just a credential reflecting a moment in time. For example, while nearly every employer relies on an individual’s university degrees and transcripts as a reflection of the knowledge and competencies they acquired while in college, it is often true that these certificates do not accurately reflect an individual’s competencies as most college graduates do not necessarily retain a lot of what they learned in basic university classes. Therefore, in order to determine whether or not a certification reflects not only the acquisition or mastery of a particular competency or skill, but also that these skills stick long-term, it is important to look closely at someone’s certificates and see if the certified skill was verified among multiple dimensions and perspectives through original and unprompted applications.

One example of a certification program focused on teaching skills and competencies across multiple dimensions would be the New Tech Network, a group of two hundred plus budgetbased schools around the United States focused on transforming traditional classrooms into environments of innovative learning. By encouraging students to engage in project-based learning—and then assessing not only the final product, but also thoroughly reviewing the student’s oral and written communication, collaboration skills, sense of agency and other attributes through self-review, peer-review, advisor feedback and community mentor feedback—educators are able to get a fuller picture of how students obtain both soft and hard skills across multiple perspectives in multiple environments, and students are able to develop their skills and competencies in a more robust way.

The future of work in a post-COVID-19 world will be even more remote.

While the job market has undoubtedly been trending towards more remote work in the past decade, the mass disruption 40 | OCTOBER 2020

caused by COVID-19 has spurred organizations around the world to move almost exclusively towards the remote work model required by social isolation, with many of these organizations having little to no experience working with this model. What does this shift of responsibility in work culture mean for talent development and the future of work? How will the job landscape’s shift towards remote work look differently in a post-pandemic world?

Personal and professional spheres collide in a world of remote work during the pandemic. With the social isolation measures put into place to curb the spread of COVID-19, many workers who have gone remote have had to face new challenges as personal and professional spheres have often become intertwined.

With children at home and out of school to keep in line with social distancing measures, workers themselves isolated at home to also keep with these measures and the added stress, anxiety and fear that have come from the pandemic and the sudden change in lifestyle, this shift towards remote work has been no easy task for organizations or employees.

On a more positive note, however, the intermingling of individuals’ personal and professional lives has actually humanized some leaders and brought many organizations closer together into a tighter-knit community culture, as well as brought about new methods of remote work that could very well change how—and more importantly, where—we work moving forward.

The shift towards remote work will come with many challenges. As we shift towards remote work in a constantly changing landscape, the need for flexible and adaptable workers is becoming more important than ever. But what happens when someone fits a company’s skillset but isn’t able to adapt to the medium through which they’re meant to apply those skills— such as an older person with weak computer skills suddenly being tasked with completing all requirements of their job from a desktop at home? And more importantly, how do you make the transition from skills that were cultivated to fit a more traditional system to a new environment where these skills may need to be adapted and applied in a context we can’t always predict?

There are teams that won’t be able to work remotely. While the job landscape’s sudden shift towards forced remote work has shown to some degree just how many jobs can be successfully accomplished from a remote workplace, the need for frontline employees—such as store associates, skilled labor jobs, sports teams, and many healthcare providers, to name a few—demonGLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 41

strates that as we move forward, it is crucial that organizations are able to accurately determine which roles can be fulfilled remotely, which roles must be accomplished in a physical space, and which kinds of roles can switch between remote and inperson tasks.

Talent diversity and inclusion will be more important than ever before in the future of jobs.

As the work-talent pipeline becomes more datafied, those from more diverse backgrounds and underserved communities are at risk of becoming subject to biased algorithms, misconstrued data patterns, and a general lack of access to information. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we ensure the most vulnerable segments of the population are equipped with the skills and competencies necessary to thrive in a postpandemic workforce.

Students do not have access to intelligence about where the future of work is going. While basic access to education was already a major problem before the advent of COVID-19, the pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated this problem, with an estimated 40 percent of students around the world having had no access to any kind of education for at least three months into the pandemic. Even students who have managed to continue their education and earn valuable skills and competencies are often unaware of what they can do with those skills and what opportunities may be available to them. While technology will no doubt play a huge part in providing information to students about new opportunities in work and education moving forward, the basic challenges of infrastructure, access, and regional disparities will continue to keep those in vulnerable and underserved communities from access to such opportunities until those challenges have been addressed.

Many organizations are already working towards talent diversity and inclusion. For example, Minerva Project at KGI, a leading educational innovator, has approached the problem of lack of diversity and inclusion in higher educational institutions by changing their approach to socioeconomic status blind admissions when admitting students through practices such as no preference to school status, getting rid of pre-written essays and changing other practices that often gave preference to those from wealthier socioeconomic backgrounds, thus becoming the most selective university in the world with a 0.8% acceptance rate—and a student population of nearly 80% of students that normally wouldn’t be able to afford university tuition.

42 | OCTOBER 2020

These sorts of programs demonstrate that while not easy, it will be possible to diversify and create a more inclusive talent pool moving forward—to the benefit of both employers and potential employees. ****** Session Moderators: • •

Kelly Ryan Bailey, Global Skills Evangelist, Emsi and Founder & Host of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby Podcast Nikki Eberhardt, Assistant Professor of Business, Minerva Schools at KGI

Session Speakers: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Ahmed Baghdady, Research Manager, World Innovation Summit on Education at Qatar Foundation Alex Kaplan, Global Leader, Blockchain for Industry Credentials, IBM Ben Nelson, CEO and Founder, Minerva Brian Fitzgerald, CEO, Business-Higher Education Forum Ellie Bertani, Senior Director, Learning, Walmart Stores, Inc Kah Yee Chiang, Product Manager, Jirnexu, Minerva Class of 2019 Maria Flynn, President and CEO, Jobs for the Future Marni Baker Stein, Provost, Chief Academic Officer, Western Governors University Matt Gee, CEO, BrightHive Pablo Guarneros, Minerva Class of 2022 Rebecca Mqamelo, Minerva Class of 2021 Salma Al-Rashid, Women20 Sherpa, G20 Summit Professor Sonal Minocha, Chief Academic Officer and Co-CEO, new Ed Tech Start-Up in the UK Taylor Kendal, Chief Program Officer, Learning Economy Foundation Tom Vander Ark, CEO, Getting Smart Yustina Saleh, EVP, Research & Analytics, Emsi

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 43

MINDSETS OVER SKILLSETS

THE SHIFTING NATURE OF PROFESSIONAL READINESS

I

n a future full of hybrid workplaces, gig jobs and technology such as robots and artificial intelligence, it will be our mindsets more than our skillsets that will determine our success in finding and navigating this evolving job landscape.

Indeed, resilient soft skills, emotional intelligence and the willingness to be able to constantly change and adapt will be critical moving forward, as well as the ability to not only meet the challenges of today, but to ask new questions and create the challenges of tomorrow as well. Ultimately, it will take both an individual awareness of one’s strengths and skills as well as the ability to use and develop those skills in a variety of team and organizational environments that will enable one to succeed no matter what in the shifting nature of professional readiness.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Assessment at the individual and organizational levels is necessary to finding and developing resilient soft skills.

Beyond technical skills and competencies whose significance tends to fluctuate with the ever-changing landscape of jobs, it is the more resilient soft skills—communication, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, management, leadership and writing, to name a few—that will prove the success of how well an individual will be able to navigate the future of jobs.

Soft skills cannot be assessed the same way as technical skills. Unlike the more easily assessable technical skills, soft skills are demonstrated through the way an individual applies them in different situations and environments over a period of time. Therefore, in order to assess an individual’s soft skills— such as their ability to communicate, work on a team and solve a variety of novel problems—it is important that individuals are able to demonstrate these skills repeatedly across a variety of situations, and that, more importantly, employers continually work with their team members to develop and foster these skills and strengths.

Self-assessment is crucial. Just as it is important for organizations to accurately assess current and potential talent, it is just as important that individuals are able to complete self-assessments in order to better understand their strengths and talents and figure out how to cultivate and articulate these strengths to potential employers. However, self-assessment is no easy task—especially with a large barrier of access to intelligence about what skills are actually needed in the job market today as well as a lack of access to resources such as career coaching 46 | OCTOBER 2020

and counseling for a majority of individuals from underserved communities. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that information about the job market as well as resources for career development be made more universally accessible to everyone, regardless of location.

It’s the balance between individual self-assessment and organizational assessment that will bring about professional development. Even after an individual is hired into an organization, it is crucial that they continue to develop their soft skills and strengths not only on at the individual level, but also as a member of the organizational culture and environment they’ve been tasked to function in. Likewise, it is equally important that the organization fosters a sense of leadership and culture that allows individuals to safely fail, and to more importantly, fail fast and fail forward.

Trying to align the educational system with the job skills arena has proven extremely difficult. With so many companies still relying on traditional and outdated signals—such as screening by university degree and background—that may not necessarily tie to the skills that employers are searching for, many individuals still adhere to more outdated forms of education that are not preparing them for the real world of work. Likewise, with employers often creating job descriptions that are lengthy, ambiguous and a poor reflection of the actual skills and talent they are looking for, both individuals and educational institutions are having a difficult time understanding the needs of the job market. Therefore, it is on both educational institutions and large organizations to communicate between each other more effectively and understand how to scale their job roles and job descriptions to find and foster the right kind of candidates.

Soft skills will be even more necessary in the hybrid workforce.

In the conventional workplace environment where traditional organizations tended to patiently nurture people over decades to become well-adapted members of the organizational ecosystem, and where soft skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership were more easily applied and developed, these skills will be harder to naturally cultivate in the highly digital space required by a hybrid workforce—and therefore, all the more necessary.

Hybrid education is preparing students for the hybrid workforce. While the social isolation required by COVID19 has brought on a sudden shift from traditional physical classroom GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 47

learning models to remote learning for over 1.7 billion students around the globe, it was found that students with a tendency towards soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity and selfregulation were best at adapting quickly and effectively to this disruption. Along the same lines, an analysis published by McKinsey and Company asking HR practitioners what important soft skills were missing right now in the workforce found that those same skills—critical thinking, creativity, self-regulation, in addition to problem solving, communication, and the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity—were what was most necessary to the hybrid workforce moving forward. Therefore, as education continues to experiment with new models and environments of learning, there is hope that students will be able to take these developing soft skills and apply them to their future job roles.

Organizations need to change the way they view job candidates. At IBM, for example, an effort to shift attention more on skills and less on a candidate’s background has led the organization to strip out resumes full of what they deem to be unnecessary background information such as job history, age and gender, redo lengthy job descriptions that often discourage qualified candidates—especially women—from applying, and dismiss the college degree as a requirement for a large portion of their workforce. In this way, IBM is attempting to demonstrate that by focusing less on these traditional signals and more on a candidate’s technical, soft and transferrable skills, organizations such as IBM can more effectively find and develop new talent that can effectively adapt to the hybrid workforce.

These soft skills can be found in abundance in vulnerable and underserved communities. Soft skills such as resilience, adaptability, critical thinking and problem solving are often the building blocks for people who have come from a place of struggle—such as those who are first generation, people of color and those who come from a low-income background. When looking for new talent, therefore, it may be more effective to put less focus on an individual’s achievements and credentials and focus more on where they have come from, the struggles that have built and developed them, the hurdles they’ve overcome and their potential to continue to meet and overcome challenges moving forward.

In a hybrid workplace, effective communication skills will become even more important. In a conventional physical workplace environment where face-to-face interactions can provide quick and effective feedback to leaders about whether or not 48 | OCTOBER 2020

they are effectively leading their teams, the ability for organizations to nurture the same level of communication and team building that comes more naturally in shared physical space—especially when working together over a long period of time—will become especially difficult in the sparse ecosystem of the hybrid workplace. It is crucial, therefore, that individuals fine-tune their communication skills in order to be more talented and adept at picking up on these sparse communication signals from everybody else about how they should be fitting into the organization.

We may not be able to predict which jobs will exist, but we do know they will all require a human element.

While we may not be able to predict exactly which jobs will be created in the future, we do know that they will require a high degree of emotional and social intelligence—and a constant thirst for knowledge.

Emotional intelligence will be fundamental, not ornamental, in a future of jobs dominated by robots and artificial intelligence. With the near inevitable future takeover of robots and AI in jobs that are more repetitive or manual by nature—even including some jobs requiring basic cognitive skills—the job market will eventually require individuals to work in jobs where more human traits—such as social and emotional intelligence— will be necessary. These would include not only higher order cognitive skills, such as synthesis, analysis and creativity, but more importantly, key emotional skills such as empathy. Indeed, even if one day robots and AI may be able to work on a basic level in some of the more care- and support-based human job roles, it is most likely that humans will always want humans to fill those roles in working to teach, lead, care, support and empathize with each other.

The skill of learning, unlearning and relearning will be fundamental to navigating the future of jobs. More than ever, it will be crucial for individuals to not only develop skillsets, but to be able to learn how to apply, adapt and reinvent their skillsets to a variety of environments as the future of jobs continues to trend towards hybrid workplaces and the gig economy. Therefore, it will not only be soft skills such as adaptability, critical thinking and problem solving that will aid individuals, but also a continuous desire to learn and the ability to unlearn and relearn that will help people succeed in the unpredictable future job landscape.

It is time for disruption by design in the education sector. More than skills, it is important that we begin creating whole people GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 49

who are prepared for whatever life may throw at them—and this will require new experimental models of education rather than a continuation of current institutions with very measurable distinct built-in barriers to change. Stackable short-term credentials that allow individuals the option to pursue a degree in a non-linear fashion, for example, could open the door to education for many people who do not have the time or resources to pursue a degree in the traditional four-year route. Similarly, innovation labs and other more real-world based education models will be necessary to foster the skills such as critical thinking and problem solving that will be essential to all job roles in the future.

We need to be having smart conversations now that set ourselves up for the future. Most important of all, we need to be creating and supporting communities and platforms that bring together the best and brightest in every industry to have continuous strategic, smart and intentional conversations about the future of work, the future of education and the future of humanity. ******

50 | OCTOBER 2020

Session Moderators: • •

Kelly Ryan Bailey, Global Skills Evangelist, Emsi and Founder & Host of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby Podcast Jon Wilkins, Professor of Computational Sciences, Minerva Schools at KGI

Session Speakers: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Alberto Arenaza, Co-Founder at Transcend Network, Minerva Class of 2019 Anggun Citra Berlian, Minerva Class of 2021 Mark Sparvell, Education Leader, Microsoft Education Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance Chris Purifoy, CEO & Chairman, Learning Economy Foundation Dara Warn, Chief Customer Officer, Penn Foster Education Group David Leaser, Senior Executive, IBM Holly Custard, Deputy Director Institute Partnerships, Strada Education Network Jennifer Thorton, Vice President of Programs, BusinessHigher Education Forum Josh Fost, Associate Dean for Curriculum and Assessment and Graduate Studies, Minerva Schools at KGI Karin Klein, Founding Partner, Bloomberg Beta Megan Cho, Minerva Class of 2021 Phil Komarny, VP of Innovation, Salesforce Rick Maher, President & CEO, Adaptive Human Capital Sallyann Della Casa, Chief Identity Hacker, GLEAC Sujata Bhatt, Senior Fellow, Transcend Education Wayne Skipper, Founder & CEO, Concentric Sky Zach Lahn, Co-Founder, Wonder School

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 51

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.

THE ROLE OF URBAN CENTERS FOR AN ALLREMOTE WORKFORCE

W

hile the transition towards a more remote workforce has been in effect for some time now, the disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused a large percentage of the workforce to suddenly enter into a remote working situation has shed a light on many of the major challenges of working remotely—as well as some of the potential benefits. While it is unknown as to whether or not remote work will remain the new norm moving forward, there is no doubt that models such as the hybrid and remote workplace will continue to expand. Indeed, recent data from a survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review revealed that 1 in 6 jobs that have become remote due to the social distancing measures put in place to ease the spread of COVID-19 are predicted to stay remote at least two days a week—even after the pandemic.

As we continue to move forward into this unpredictable new job landscape, several questions can be raised. What will be the continued effects of this all-remote workforce? What are the advantages and disadvantages to a physical office space versus a digital working environment? And more importantly, how will the potential continued repercussions of this pandemic affect urban centers and the tie between physical location and work?

KEY TAKEAWAYS Interaction and communication are essential in both physical offices and remote work models. With the sudden transition into a remote work setting for many people, it has become much more apparent just how important interaction and communication are in running a company—and even more so, just how much the physical environment one works in can affect those factors.

The physical space between people matters. While the pandemic has brought about a deep level of empathy and a whole person approach that has made the sudden forced transition to remote work slightly more manageable, it has also brought to light just how important of a role collective space—be it a physical office, workshop, etc.—plays in social interaction, collaboration, creativity, and insight. Indeed, while virtual platforms can often serve as an effective space for dealing with basic meetings and more transaction-based issues, it is the more creative brainstorming and novel problem solving that will ultimately require the human approach of people sitting around a table and collaborating with one another face-to-face in a shared space.

Urban centers can serve as an environment of socialization for those in fully remote working positions. While organizations no doubt benefit from providing employees with a collaborative workspace, those 54 | OCTOBER 2020

in fully remote positions are not always able to participate in such an environment, and therefore, it is important that companies are extra intentional about creating a company culture in the online space as well. Similarly, on a more personal level, in order for individuals to not feel trapped to the social isolation that is often brought on by being socially distanced from their teams and colleagues, it is important that individuals are also intentional about socializing through other facets as well, such as rediscovering their neighborhood or even working alongside friends in a co-working space.

As we transition back to a hybrid workforce model, certain things from the pandemic will stick and certain things will not. As organizations slowly transition back to their original work structures, it will be important to analyze how factors such as efficiency, synergy, communication and real-life versus digital interaction affect different people in different working environments during the pandemic in order to better understand how to address the needs of the future hybrid workforce. Indeed, if we are to continue working towards a future of remote and hybrid work, it is important that we use the pandemic to collectively become more conscious of these factors—but until we have a fuller understanding of the real value of these interactions, we will most likely not have enough information to drive the smart decision-making necessary to generate a truly effective hybrid workforce.

We don’t know the long-lasting effects COVID-19 will have, if any, on city migration. While pandemics of the past have traditionally altered the ways in which cities are planned, zoned, and created, it will be difficult to determine the long-lasting effects that the COVID-19 pandemic will have not only on urban life itself, but also the way in which people migrate in and out of cities.

It’s a time of recalibration and rebalancing for urban centers. As people continue to move in and out of city centers, the role of cities in peoples’ lives is transforming—and it is therefore important to use this time of change to recalibrate urban centers in terms of creating environments where people can live and work without sacrificing the quality of life of the city itself. However, with many mega cities having gotten to the point where people come into the city to work but can no longer afford to live there, inequality, homelessness, and joblessness have become an even larger problem for cities across the world.

As we move forward, it is of the utmost importance that cities continue to work towards creating an environment that supports diversity without gentrification, density without congestion, and serendipity without over-crowdedness in order to allow people to move back in and experience a better quality of life—as well as set the groundwork for an improved and more creative knowledge-based economy.

GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 55

While change is necessary, the pandemic alone will most likely not lead to many long-lasting effects on the urban landscape.

While the pandemic has undoubtedly transformed many facets of life as we know it in the present, in the long-run, the fairly inflexible nature of human behavior will lead us back to business as usual.

Data from Lyft, for example, has already demonstrated that as cities start to open back up, the number of people using car-sharing services has also dramatically increased. Therefore, rather than assuming that human behavior will change in some significant way due short-term changes to city life brought on by the pandemic, it is more likely that people will continue to move in and away from cities for the same reasons as before the pandemic—and consequently, it will be more important for city planners to continue their work in reshaping cities around people to attract talent back to the cities and create a better quality of life for its inhabitants.

Technology can bring access and inclusion to those who don’t live in cities. With the continued transition of the job landscape towards hybrid and remote work, living within or nearby urban centers may no longer become a necessity, and skilled individuals from more disadvantaged backgrounds may gain wider access to jobs that only require a computer. However, with less than 50% of the world still without access to the internet and other basic necessary technologies, it is of the utmost importance that focus continue to be put on creating the infrastructure necessary to bringing technology to every part of the world so that access to jobs will be made available to everyone, regardless of physical location.

It will be essential to adapt to the changes created by the COVID-19 pandemic for cities to become more resilient moving forward.

In order to build more resilient cities for the future, it will be crucial to look at how different cities have responded in different ways to the major disruptions caused by the pandemic. As we move forward, it will be vital to collect evidence and research on the effects the pandemic has had on cities in order to engage in smart decision-making about how cities can become more resilient. As we slowly transition back to the new normal, gathering information about which cities displayed better resilience during the pandemic will be crucial. Conducting research into the causes of migration out of cities before and after the pandemic, surveying neighborhoods to create street-level ethnographical models that can be studied, and looking into how urban cities can become magnets for talent, or example, are some of the ways that will help inform decision-making moving forward and allow cities and its inhabitants to come out of the crisis much more resilient and vibrant than before.

56 | OCTOBER 2020

It is time to explore more innovative development models. With the current model of cities being largely centered around who has access to land and capital for development, this financial incentive structure has created an unsustainable model of inequity. Consequently, a shift away from opportunity zones controlled by the top one to two percent of people who hold power in cities to more equitable models—such as community-based and shared equity models—will be necessary in order to make cities more resilient following the wake of the pandemic.

Second-tier cities can provide an example of resilience. As we transition out of the pandemic, it is more likely we will see, more than the mega cities, that it is the second-tier cities with a higher perception of quality life that are coming out of the pandemic more resilient than before. Indeed, it is the ways in which these smaller cities have successfully responded to the pandemic that we can ultimately use as an example of how to foster creativity, innovation and learning in order to attract and retain talent in the cities of the future.

Session Moderators: • •

*****

Kelly Ryan Bailey, Global Skills Evangelist, Emsi and Founder & Host of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby Podcast Catherine Carter, Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities Accomplishments, Minerva Schools at KGI

Session Speakers: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Andy Coxall, Chief, Student Experiences, Common Purpose Chris Luebkeman, Global Director, Arup Foresight and ETH Zurich Cynthia Hansen, Head of Adecco Group Foundation, Adecco Group Diana El-Azar, Senior Director, Strategic Communications, Minerva Schools Dominic Regester, Program Director, Salzburg Global Seminar Fiona Picard, Co-Founder, Circle & Dot, Minerva Class of 2019 Heyu Huang, Partner, Fresco Capital, Minerva Class of 2019 Jacob Sherson, Founder & Executive Director, Center for Hybrid Intelligence and ScienceAtHome Jay Deshmukh, Architect/Associate Manager, IBI Group Jody Kelman, Director, Self-Driving Platform, Lyft Lironne Koret, Minerva Class of 2021 Louis Brickman, Business Development Manager, FlixBus, Minerva Class of 2019 Phoenix Wang, Program Director, Spring Point Partners Sam Potolicchio, President, PGLF and Distinguished Prof and Vice Dean Russian Presidential Academy Sebastien Turbot, CEO & Chief Curator, eko6 GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 57

SCALING THE PARENTAL WALL

THE EVOLVING ROLE OF EMPLOYERS IN DEALING WITH THE NEEDS OF WORKING PARENTS

W

hile the “working parent” has traditionally had to silently struggle in balancing work responsibilities and career advancement with raising and caring for children, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought renewed attention and a new sense of empathy for the plight of those who work and parent at the same time. Indeed, as the traditional family model continues to shift away from the model of one working parent and one child-rearing parent to a newer model where both parents as well as single parents are required to work, policy at both the company and federal level will be necessary to address the needs of working parents, as well as a mindset and cultural shift towards destigmatizing many of the taboos surrounding working parents. However, as each individual employee experiences unique parental challenges, the ability for employers to address and support their working parents can prove difficult—especially during a pandemic. The question remains then: how can the role of employers evolve in order to better deal with the unique needs of working parents? And more importantly, what can be done on the governmental level to address the universal needs of parents in every industry?

KEY TAKEAWAYS Parental needs and employment needs are changing.

With both parental responsibilities and work responsibilities increasing for working parents, the support of their organizations, communities and the government will be necessary.

While the fundamental parental need to support children has not changed, the world we are raising our children in has. Though children require a certain set of needs that are universal—the need to be well sheltered, well fed and most of all well-loved—the evolving landscape of education and jobs has changed the kind of education children are expected to learn, as well as the necessity to be able to more flexibly respond to the way our world is rapidly evolving.

As such, parents are expected to take care of their children in a way that will prepare them for this unknown future—all while tackling it themselves. Indeed, with the increasing expectation for parents to do more for their children while also being expected to do more for their companies and employers, parents are facing increasing pressure in both their home and work lives—and with the pandemic suddenly seeing these two worlds collide, the need for parents to be supported by their companies, their communities and their governments is more critical than ever.

60 | OCTOBER 2020

The pandemic is affecting different parents in different ways.

Just as parents working remotely will have different needs than parents working on the frontline, the needs of parents with children of different ages—from parents of newborns, to parents with children in K-12, to parents with grown children and even parents taking care of their own parents—has affected working parents of all different backgrounds in very unique ways, and therefore, it is crucial that solutions be more individualized in order to empower parents who work as best as possible based on their unique circumstances and challenges.

There is a wide range of solutions, but it is not easy to understand how to adapt them individually to each parent’s unique needs.

When it comes to recognizing the supports working parents need at this time, much of the responsibility is falling on the manager—on how they’re engaging with and supporting their employees in terms of work flexibility, time off and other benefits. However, with such a wide spectrum of employees with different needs—from parents with children in school to parents opting for homeschooling to single people with no children at all—understanding the needs of each individual employee can prove a daunting task for employers.

Indeed, with so many different supports needed for so many different circumstances of working parents, from needs such as a support community—which, for many parents, used to be their offices and communal work environments—to the differing levels of need for comfort and safety regarding how much outside contact their children can be exposed to, the ability for employers to accommodate personal circumstances and craft personalized strategies and solutions will be critical both during and after the pandemic—but it will be no easy task.

There needs to be a cultural shift from employers simply tolerating parental roles to truly appreciating working parents. As the pandemic has brought to light just how big of a struggle parents have in balancing work responsibilities with the responsibility of raising children, there is hope that the plight of working parents becomes less taboo and a true appreciation and empathy can be gained for parents in the workplace. More importantly, this appreciation and support must come not only from direct supervisors, but from company leaders and the government, with more focus being put on equitable policies—most especially family leave policies and universal childcare initiatives—to cover the universal needs of parents and children moving forward.

It is the right time for fathers to be fully and transparently embracing their role. As fathers spend more and more necessary time with GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 61

their children, the stigma around men taking advantage of parental leave policies that exist within their companies—if they exist—needs to be lifted, and men should be encouraged to assist their spouses, to co-parent and to take on the role as lead parent when necessary, with the support of their company and employers.

Employers need to adopt new practices to change the working environment for parents.

The emotional culture of the workplace needs to be changed. As perspectives on parenting have shifted and a new type of intimacy has appeared, the stigma of not only recognizing and accepting employees as parents, but also the taboo of having children in the workplace, needs to be lifted. Indeed, perhaps until more universal childcare policies can be put into place, a shift towards reinventing workspaces and corporate campuses to allow for and accommodate children when necessary should be encouraged in order for individuals to more easily tackle both work and parental responsibilities.

Paid parental leave and universal childcare need to be federal policy. While support from employers will be necessary on the individual level, the current system of having benefits such as paid parental leave and childcare benefits tied to company policies and not protected on the federal level has caused many employees to lose portability, as their careers and trajectories are often dictated as to whether or not they can receive much needed childcare benefits. Therefore, government public policy needs to be implemented through corporate intervention, company lobbying and companies across the board shifting towards a culture that engages and supports working parents.

We need to start by measuring parenting. In order to create better company and federal policy surrounding parenting, measuring how working parents move through organizations and whether or not employers are keeping them in the leadership pipelines and providing them with adequate support needs to become part of company leadership targets—and until we begin measuring such metrics, we will continue to have little to no line of sight into how to better support working parents.

The future for working parents is optimistic.

Despite the immense challenges working parents face balancing both work and childcare responsibilities in a time of crisis, the progress that has been made thus far and the surprising transparency and empathy COVID-19 has brought to the realities of parenting is cause for optimism that we will see exponential growth in policies 62 | OCTOBER 2020

and practices that better care for and support working parents in the next decade. Indeed, with many societies around the world already creating and maintaining healthy social constructs and ideas about parenting that serve as a support for company practices that care for the needs of working parents, we may already be entering into a new era where all companies have support systems in place for employees who work and parent simultaneously—and we may just be able to use this moment in history as a catalyst to continue to go better forward. ***** Session Moderators: • •

Kelly Ryan Bailey, Global Skills Evangelist, Emsi and Founder & Host of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby Podcast Scott Wisor, Associate Professor of Arts and Humanities, Minerva Schools at KGI

Session Speakers: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Annie Breitenbach, Founder, Wonder School Blessing Adesiyan, Founder, Mother Honestly Betsy Corcoran, Co-Founder, EdSurge Brigette Lau, Founding Partner, Firework Ventures Carol O’Donnell, Executive Director, Smithsonian Science Education Center Christian Sicars Bravo, Minerva Class of 2021 Courtney McBeth, SVP, Impact Operations, Strada Education Network Gayatri Agnew, Senior Director of Opportunity, Walmart Katie Carlin, Founder, Equal Play, Minerva Class of 2019 Katie Kempton, VP of Operations, Learning Economy Kymberly Lavigne-Hinkley, Senior Manager, Coaching and Deployment, Skillful at Markle Foundation Lydiah Kemunto Bosire, Founder & CEO, 8B Education Investments Manjula Dissanayake, Executive Director, Educate Lanka Foundation Mary Beth Ferrante, Founder and CEO, WRK/360 Matt Sunbulli, CEO & Co-Founder, Fishbowl Noam Gerstein, Founder, The Bina School Rajika Bhandari, President and CEO, IC3 Institute Sharan Singh, Managing Director, Strategic Partnerships, Americas & EMEA, Minerva Project Thanh Nguyen, Minerva Class of 2020 Vipula Gandhi, Managing Partner, Education Practice, GALLUP GLOBAL TALENT SUMMIT REPORT | 63

ADVERTISEMENT

Emsi Skills A common language to connect people, education, and work Sustainable development goals just got easier with Emsi Skills, a new, open-access skills library. Emsi Skills helps organizations understand the real-world skills that people have and that employers need.

PEOPLE

E D U C AT I O N

EMPLOYERS

Better understand and

Discover which skills you

Understand your

communicate your skills

should feature in your

organization’s skill needs,

to employers

programs

and find the right talent

Access Emsi Skills The Emsi skills library is available now via API, enabling organizations to access the full list of skills along with the skill type, unique skill ID, related skills, and skill pages. Emsi’s database of over 30,000 skills is collected from millions of job postings, resumes, and professional profiles. The skills library is updated every two weeks, based on live postings and profiles as well as suggested skills submitted through Emsi Skills. Emsi takes an ontological approach, combining human curation and machine learning to discover new and emerging skills and ensure that they accurately reflect the labor market.

skills.emsidata.com

ADVERTISEMENT

Learn Care Challenge Lead Zurich International School is a forward-thinking, child-centered organization preparing our students to join and strengthen a global community of citizens, determined to make a difference to the communities in which they work and live. We’re committed to ensuring our students develop the intellect, skills and character to become caring individuals and adaptable and independent thinkers.

www.zis.ch

Global Talent Summit March 2020.indd 1

31/03/2020 11:27:54

ADVERTISEMENT

How Will You Come Back Stronger?

It’s hard to imagine a post-crisis future and how your organization will thrive in tomorrow’s unknown reality.

How each organization looks at recovery will be different, but one truth is certain: the steps you take now will impact future success. Let us help you create a roadmap for recovery to understand the current environment, navigate the unknown, prioritize decision-making, identify new stakeholders and engage differently with existing ones.

Together we will help you take action now to plan your future.

APCO Worldwide

An advisory and advocacy communications consultancy

apcoworldwide.com