EDUCATION


Building the workforce of the future


Relocate’s first Festival of Global Mobility Thinking saw HR, global mobility professionals, employers and educators come together to discuss mobility’s widening role and responsibility in developing and enabling future talent for the sector. The interactive afternoon panel sought to find creative solutions for preparing young people for 2030 and beyond in order to close the skills gap. These were some of the themes keenly debated at the historic St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London.


How should we future-proof young people and is there still value in teaching human skills?


CA: The key skills for the future will be what used to be called


soft skills, which are actually much harder to teach. There are four essential areas that have been widely recommended and they are creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. But it’s not just about preparing young people for the jobs that are here now. You’ve got to give young people the resilience, confidence and awareness to understand that the jobs which exist now will change. We also have to set them up with the reality that they’re going to


be working till they’re 70-75 years old. Many of them are expected to be working part-time till they’re 80 – that’s nearly 60 years of employment. Broken down, that’s roughly four different careers at 15 years a piece. So they must have the flexibility of mind to be constantly picking up new skills. We have to abandon the idea that education finishes at the age of 16,18 or 21 because it is continuous. We also need to be open-minded about what jobs are going to look like in the future.


Charlotte Avery Headmistress of St Mary’s Cambridge and vice chair of The Girls’ Schools Association


Holly Creed


Global mobility manager, DXC Technology


Kieran Earley Chief executive and principal, The British School in The Netherlands


Dr Sue Shortland Professor emerita, London Metropolitan University


KE: In a world of robotics and AI the ability to remain human


is going to be more important than ever, particularly creativity. Creativity is an essential skill and I’m not sure that you can teach it. It is very important for schools to expose people to coding and robotics and so forth but how do you create an environment that can allow young people to be more human? Well, you have to make sure your curriculum is wide enough and has enough time in it for students to enjoy the things that make them human, like the arts. A broad curriculum that includes the arts helps them understand


what the human condition is. In a technology age, where information is exchanged so quickly, we need to remind ourselves of how humans have felt over generations and how to better humanity even more so.


How can the sector boost the future talent pool for STEM-related roles or other areas of work where females are underrepresented?


SS:Our future leaders come from people with global experience


so if we want women to rise up through the ranks of organisations and increase diversity at that level then women have to have access to international mobility. One of the key issues is that the industries that use the most


expatriates are historically masculine industries, such as mining, engineering, construction and oil and gas – all of which use lots of international people. In oil and gas, typically 6 per cent will be expatriates. Your average firm will have 1 per cent, so you can see the number is going to be higher. If girls in schools are not doing the science-based qualifications at


the early stages, then they’re not going to go on to do the university degrees that these sectors want that give the expatriate careers in large numbers. I’m not saying women have to have that background but it helps to secure those top positions if you want international experience in a company that uses globally mobile people. So there are two things working together, the horizontal segregation of women being followed into feminised professions


30 | Relocate | Summer 2018


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