Education key for workforce 4.0

Participants discussed about the importance of learnability in the digital age at the World Economic Forum in Hanoi

What do you think are the impacts of digital transformation on human resources?

Digital transformation is now an obvious trend in many sectors. Given the constant change, it is harder for individuals to keep their skills up to date or to predict what hiring managers will need three years from now. With the development of artificial intelligence, we will soon see impacts on both blue- and white-collar workers.

Human resources (HR) will make greater use of new digital systems, such as applicant tracking systems and HR information systems, to interact with employees, and analytics and assessment tools to drive efficiency and longer-term planning. Standardised processes, like on-boarding or benefit management, will be both automated and individualised. Many large employers have created internal online communities to communicate with employees. Ultimately, workforce platforms that bring together numerous technologies and systems and crunch thousands of gigabytes of data will help HR better engage and manage the workforce.

How can tech-enabled, personalised learning pathways increase the quality of a workforce to meet the requirements of businesses across different sectors in the Industry 4.0 era?

All around the world, people are paying more attention to developing skills to adapt to the changing world of work. With the rise of Industry 4.0, tech-enabled, personalised learning pathways come out as one of the best solutions to increase workforce quality. PowerYOU, ManpowerGroup’s global online training and development platform, is a good example. The platform has been deployed since 1998 to provide valuable coaching, assessment, online training, and career guidance on in-demand roles. Whether it is managers wanting to develop their leadership skills or IT professionals that want to start a career in marketing, PowerYOU can help them to up-skill or re-skill by themselves. PowerYOU provides thousands of online courses with videos, virtual classrooms, simulations, and so much more.

To support people to find suitable jobs, ManpowerGroup provides MyPath, a programme that helps people focus on learning to arm themselves for the changing job market, provides them with tools to identify their next move, and lends a helping hand with assessing their strengths.

As the world leader in innovative workforce solutions, we advise our clients to invest in their people and encourage them to pursue lifelong learning so that they can grow their skills and progress in their career.

Many sectors in the ASEAN region and Vietnam are forecasted to face talent shortages in the future. What should we do to prepare the future workforce through demand-driven education?

It is obvious that businesses need to accelerate efforts to up-skill and re-skill their employees in the changing world of work. According to the “Skill Revolution 2.0” report by ManpowerGroup, “Human Strengths” like communication, collaboration, problem solving, organisation, customer service, and leadership skills are indispensable to augment machines, not being replaced by them.

Most importantly, the workforce need to have learnability to acquire new skills to be employable throughout their whole career journeys. The haves, those with in-demand skills, see wages increases, while the have-nots, those with low or outdated skills, see wages stand still or decline.

With record talent shortage around the world, it is no longer a question of simply finding talent, organisations need to become the builders of talent.

What initiatives has ManpowerGroup Vietnam carried out to advance work-based learning and vocational training to help businesses satisfy their HR demands?

With global knowledge and expertise, we always innovate our workforce solutions to help companies find the right people for their organisation’s growth as well as to retain and develop their high-skilled workforce. We advise our clients to provide training to help their current workforce continuously learn and develop to succeed in their careers.

We have engaged in helping young people develop in-demand skills and sharing workforce expertise developed in more than 80 countries. We have inked memoranda of understanding to provide soft skills training with training institutions across the country.

Moreover, we have been organising many career talks with students at universities, colleges, and vocational schools to provide them with career orientation knowledge, such as defining self-values, in-demand skills, interview skills, and setting themselves apart in the eyes of employers, among others.