Education

Cohesion is the next big thing

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You want to know what the next big thing for business is going to be? Of course you do, we always want to know the next big thing. Right?

But this time it’s serious. I’m serious.

The next big thing is cohesion.

When we talked about the future of work being human, we were almost there. But not there enough. I’ve been writing on this site for seven years, talking about being the need to be more human focused, but it isn’t quite right. We’ve been distracted by debates around AI and technology and missed the main point.

The future is something much bigger and much more important.

In my forty-four years, the political, economic and social environment has never felt more fragmented, more fragile and frankly more perilous.

As organisations, as employers we have an obligation to bring something to the party that is greater than the simple exchange of labour for money. We have an obligation to bring something that creates more than we extract. That binds and helps communities to heal.

This isn’t simply about corporate responsibility, used by too many organisations as a social-conscious healing makeweight. This is about endeavouring to change the existence of the communities in which we operate through our work, our practice and our existence.

This is about creating workplaces that are safe, both in terms of physical and mental wellbeing. Where individuals are respected for who they are, regardless of similarity or difference. That the rules of tolerance and respect are adhered to by all.

This is about building long-term and meaningful partnerships with employees, either individually, collectively or through their organised representation. Ensuring that decisions are made for the benefit of all stakeholders.

This is about developing skills and education for the long-term, both in the workforce and the community – recognising that we have a power to teach and to give, even to those who may not work for us.

This is about looking after those that work for us, on a financial and emotional footing. Ensuring that people are fairly paid for their labour, that the pay is representative of their skills and their contribution, not their gender or their race. That they need not worry in times of sickness or difficulty.

This is about ensuring that we are commercially successful so that we can invest back into the infrastructure that supports employees, creates new jobs and allows us to share that success both directly and indirectly.

And it is about leadership that recognises the importance of every single individual that works in an organisation and genuinely respects the roles and the participation of everyone.

Cohesion is going to be the next big talking point in the world of HR. Don’t forget you read it here.

The future of jobs

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Last week the REC published their report on the Future of Jobs. I’d absolutely recommend taking a read of it if you haven’t already. It is freely available here.

What really excited me about the commission was the range of interests being expressed and how much agreement there was in the views being conveyed by different parties. Ultimately, those representing employees, those representing employers and those representing government and special interest groups want pretty much the same thing. The summary conclusions of the report make this abundantly clear.

For employees:
“The best jobs market in the world for individuals is one with opportunities to get
into work and subsequently progress, and one where people have genuine choice in terms of ways of working. A future UK jobs market is also one where individuals feel fulfilled, respected, and recognised, and where people can succeed irrespective of their background. Realising this vision rests largely with the government – particularly with regards to the need for an education system that nurtures individual potential and prepares future generations for the changing world of work. However, a future jobs market must also be one where individuals take personal responsibility for their own career development and take advantage of lifelong learning opportunities. Advice, guidance, and development for all workers is an essential development.”

For employers:
“The best jobs market in the world for an employer is one where evolving skills and staffing needs of employers are easily met, where productivity levels are improving on the back of increased investment in skills, where recruitment procedures have been ‘re-imagined’ to reflect the new world of work, and where management and leadership capability has been radically enhanced. Planning for the future jobs market must be a priority for UK plc and for the public sector. Demographics, ‘flexible hiring’, managing a multigenerational workforce, adapting to new technologies, and the use of data will prove critical to organisational success. As technology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotics gather pace, businesses, recruiters, and managers must plan their workforce more creatively and ensure that they are able to access the talent that they need. Access to UK, EU, and global talent will remain critical, but we also need to see more employers working with schools and colleges.”

For policy makers:
“Policy-makers should seek to ‘get in front’ of the seismic changes that will impact on the jobs market. The government has a key role to play in ensuring that education is adequately preparing young people for this new world of work. The government must also lead a radical focus on lifelong learning and create an infrastructure that enables individuals of all ages to make transitions and compete in this ever-changing jobs market. The Brexit process will have a profound impact on the UK jobs market; we need to ensure that the post-EU landscape is one in which both demand and supply of staff remains vibrant. In addition to a world-class skills and work infrastructure, we need a progressive and balanced immigration system that allows businesses to ll the jobs they have available. We must not take the UK ‘jobs machine’ for granted. There is a need for a proportionate and effective regulatory and taxation landscape that reflects modern working practices while also facilitating job-creation.”

Of course, saying it is easier than making it happen. But we all have the ability to make micro changes that move our organisations in the right direction. And in that, we need to consider the world through the lenses of all the stakeholder groups. Building a successful future means building one in which as many people as possible can share in and profit from that success. If we can do that, we’ll all be able to be proud of the work we’ve done.

Abolishing university fees is not the answer

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Our problems with education are much deeper and more complicated than the debate about whether university fees should be free or not. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that making our current university system free would be catastrophic financial mistake that would increased debt without providing the necessary economic benefit to the country.

Let’s consider the two arguments for attending and progressing through higher education. Many people argue that learning is simply an enriching process that is rewarding for the individual and broadly beneficial to society as a whole. I’ve heard this expressed on numerous occasions. The problem with this argument is that places value and priority on only one form of learning or enrichment, generally based on the proponent’s own personal experience.

One could reasonably see an argument that taking a year out and travelling across Asia, learning about different cultures, seeing different cultural sites and immersing yourself in the culture could be equally, if not more, enriching to the individual. Or spending time in your bedroom pulling apart computers, searching the internet and learning about how to code, But of course, we don’t see many people proposing that the state should fund people’s travels and trips or internet explorations in their bedroom.

The second, more plausible, argument is that the country should have a high skilled economy and this is driven by university attendance. The problem with this argument is that the proponents of fee free university attendance don’t discriminate in their approach to the courses that should be available and the number of places. In other words, the value of the subsidy that is placed on a medical degree is exactly the same as the value that is placed on a degree in forensic psychology. Yet demand for the skills in the labour market is entirely different.

Add to this the complexity of the entry requirements for various subjects and the provision of places not matching with the needs of the economy (we reject bright, dedicated students away from degrees in medicine and then have shortages of doctors and a need to hire in from abroad) and you have a highly imperfect system. Is this a system we want to subsidise at significant cost to the taxpayer? Personally, my answer is no.

It seems to me that a level of government subsidy in the subjects that we are short of and need to build a thriving and dynamic economy, could and should be a good thing. But that should also extend into postgraduate development and in technical and professional development in vocational education – in the way that we’ve seen this applied to teacher training. Simply, applying a one size fits all approach to tertiary education misses the point and is a blunt and inefficient use of taxpayers’ money.

A well though through economic and industrial strategy linked to educational end vocational incentives for the subjects with skills shortages supported by a realistic and progressive graduate tax for other subjects feels like a more sensible and joined up way of approaching the topic. The links between education, skills and the country’s economic prosperity are complex and interwoven, but the job of government is to unpick them for the benefit of all – not simply as a means to buy votes.

Get a proper job

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In my middle teens, I dreamed of owning and running my own restaurant. It combined my love of cooking, food and entertaining with an interest in business and management. When I expressed this view to those influential in my life, the consensus was pretty clear – get a proper job.

Many years later, I’m sure the advice was well-meaning and correct. I’m not sure the world needs another mediocre restaurateur (although it could be argued that they didn’t need another mediocre HR Director either) and I struggle to think of a day I’ve not wanted to go in to work.

I wonder how many students in college and university are also being advised about which jobs and careers are “proper” and which ones they should avoid. And how are the judgments made about the “right” career paths. What makes counting other people’s money or learning and arguing a set of created laws, “proper” and yet feeding them or building their houses somehow less…well, concrete?

Is the heart of the issue is our approach to education and skills and the perceived link to future wealth and prosperity.? “Proper jobs” are seen as more secure, better paying and require more skills. And whilst this is attractive in it’s simplicity, it is hard to see how a good apprenticeship in engineering will place you in a less advantageous position than, say, a degree in criminology.

With the additional complexity of trying to understand which sectors and roles will be in increasing demand and which will see the largest impact of automation (and in what time frame), the definition of a “proper job” becomes significantly more about prejudice and perception than any predictable outcome of future fortune.

Perhaps our biggest fault as a society has been to overlook the importance of skilled, technically able careers and replace it with the fetishisation of “management” and “professionalism”. Not only are we encouraging young people away from careers that they might actually enjoy and find fulfilling, but have also inadvertently created skills and labour shortages in many essential areas.

I may not have made a very good restaurateur, I’m at peace with that, but I certainly value those people around me that are brilliantly skilled in their work and who have a depth of technical expertise in their fields that I am in awe of. And let’s face it, in a post apocalyptic society, who would you rather have on your side – a farmer, a builder and an engineer or a banker, a social media consultant and a HRD?