Civil society can make sure no one is left stranded by the skills gap

McKinsey estimates one-third of humanity will be in a different job by the end of the decade. According to the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, 31.6% of companies in Latin America struggle to find qualified workers, higher than the global average. A recent study by the Inter-american Development Bank cites that only 30% of children in third and fourth grade actually meet the minimum benchmark for critical skills required in the digital era. And in its Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum highlights that reskilling and upskilling will be essential in order to prevent “undesirable lose-lose scenarios at the national level: technological change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality”.

While estimates about how jobs are likely to change vary wildly, it’s clear the future of work means some jobs will disappear and new ones will be created.

Overcoming the challenge, particularly in regions like Latin America where talent gaps are the largest in the world, will require significant and cohesive efforts across the non-profit, government and business sectors – respecting and leveraging each sector for its strengths, while working together to understand how we manage equitably and inclusively.

While significant literature exists on the roles of industry and government in addressing these challenges, the impact of work lead by civil society is often invisible. Civil society is providing key solutions in partnership with other stakeholders through digital capacity-building programmes, community-driven approaches and project-based work. Community-based organizations have been contributing to the development of future workforces within their countries, with significant investments from philanthropy, industry and government. For example:

Efforts like these, and countless others led by community-based organizations around the world, highlight the flexibility of the sector and opportunity to test and learn in the face of massive challenges. So how can government and industry leaders work with the sector to strengthen the future of work agenda? There seems to be a persistent lack of knowledge across and between sectors about what makes these programmes successful, how they are structured and judge success, how to form and foster the partnerships that drive them, or where one might go to learn and get started modeling a programme that is relevant.

As part of the World Economic Forum’s initiative on Partnering with Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Forum has convened a working group co-chaired by Google.org, Mozilla and TechSoup to capture how various stakeholders have been partnering with civil society in the future of work, mainstreaming knowledge and creating shared evidence for concrete opportunities for collaboration, and addressing the effects of new technologies.

Together with stakeholders from governments, corporations and civil society, we will focus our efforts on a series of learning sessions across Latin America – from which we hope to derive and share best practices, help contextualize our learnings for stakeholders, and generally demystify approaches to equitably overcoming our collective challenge in preparing for the future of work.