An extraordinary confluence of forces stemming from automation and digital technologies is transforming both the world of work and the ways we educate current and future employees to contribute productively to the workplace. The Great Skills Gap opens with the premise that the exploding scope and pace of technological innovation in the digital age is fast transforming the fundamental nature of work. Due to these developments, the skills and preparation that employers need from their talent pool are shifting. The accelerated pace of evolution and disruption in the competitive business landscape demands that workers be not only technically proficient, but also exceptionally agile in their capacity to think and act creatively and quickly learn new skills. This book explores how these transformative forces are—or should be—driving innovations in how colleges and universities prepare students for their careers. Focused on the impact of this confluence of forces at the nexus of work and higher education, the book's contributors—an illustrious group of leading educators, prominent employers, and other thought leaders—answer profound questions about how business and higher education can best collaborate in support of the twenty-first century workforce.

Solve the number one problem with today's young workforce—the soft skills gap The number one challenge with today's young talent is a problem hiding in plain sight: the ever-widening soft skills gap. Today's new, young workforce has so much to offer—new technical skills, new ideas, new perspective, new energy. Yet too many of them are held back because of their weak soft skills. Soft skills may be harder to define and measure than hard skills, but they are just as critical. People get hired because of their hard skills but get fired because of their soft skills. Setting a good example or simply telling young workers they need to improve isn't enough, nor is scolding them or pointing out their failings in an annual review. However you can teach the missing basics to today's young talent. Based on more than twenty years of research, Bruce Tulgan, renowned expert on the millennial workforce, offers concrete solutions to help managers teach the missing basics of professionalism, critical thinking, and followership—complete with ninety-two step-by-step lesson plans designed to be highly flexible and easy to use. Tulgan's research and proven approach has show that the key to teaching young people the missing soft skills lies in breaking down critical soft skills into their component parts, concentrating on one small component at a time, with the help of a teaching-style manager. Almost all of the exercises can be done in less than an hour within a team meeting or an extended one-on-one. The exercises are easily modified and customized and can be used as take-home exercises for any individual or group, to guide one-on-one discussions with direct-reports and in the classroom as written exercises or group discussions. Managers—and their young employees—will find themselves returning to their favorite exercises over and over again. One exercise at a time, managers will build up the most important soft skills of their new, young talent. These critical soft skills can make the difference between mediocre and good, between good and great, between great and one of a kind.

The shortage of skills in the workforce is one of the major problems facing enterprises today. How American businesses and organizations intend to deal with these issues and operate in a global market under strong competition is one of their primary worries. The only logical and tangible solution to this issue is for the educational system and major businesses and organizations to begin making investments in educating more children and young adults in soft skills like the 21st-century 4Cs skills (critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration) to prepare them to meet the challenges of emerging businesses and technologies. The 21st century has witnessed a rapid transformation in the global workforce and the skills required to thrive in it. Traditional knowledge-based skills alone are no longer sufficient to succeed in today’s complex and dynamic business environment. Instead, organizations increasingly value what is known as the "4Cs" skills: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. However, a significant skills gap exists, where many employees lack these crucial abilities. This book explores the impact of the 21st-century 4Cs skills gap in organizations and how it affects their performance, innovation, and competitiveness. The 21st-century 4Cs skills gap poses a significant challenge for organizations across industries. The inability to communicate effectively, collaborate seamlessly, think critically, and foster creativity can hinder productivity, innovation, and competitiveness. As the business landscape continues to evolve, addressing this skills gap is not only a necessity but also a strategic imperative for organizations looking to thrive in the 21st century. Bridging the gap through training, recruitment, and a commitment to a learning culture will be essential for success in the increasingly complex and interconnected world of business.

Volumes have been written about the value of more and better education. But is there sufficient evidence to support the commonly held belief that we, as individuals and as a community, should be investing more in education? This book explores that question in unprecedented detail, drawing on empirical evidence from an impressive array of sources. While much of the focus is on the educational system in the United Kingdom, the book offers lessons of international applicability. A state-of-the-art compendium on education policy and its impact on educational attainment, the book examines numerous large-scale data sources on individual pupils and schools. The questions the book considers are far-ranging: How much do teachers matter for children's educational attainment? What payoff do people get from acquiring more education when they enter the labor market? How well do education systems function to provide employers with the skills they want? The book concludes by issuing some strong policy recommendations and offering an evaluation of what does and does not work in improving educational attainment. The recommendations address such issues as school effectiveness, education financing, individual investment in education, government education initiatives, higher education, labor market rewards, and lifelong learning.

The book is a reflection of a post-COVID world, workplace, work and worker. It focuses on the stresses COVID has created, especially in the context of the accelerated, rapidly changing work environment. The book adopts a Singaporean perspective in viewing the nexus between the forces of change, culture and management as it relates to work. In considering how best to increase employee engagement, employee motivation and productivity, it proposes a framework through which leaders, talent practitioners and managers can organise worker collaboration and generate synergy in the process, cumulatively encapsulated by the notion of workplace culture. The book concludes with a view of the futures of work, the main forces of change, complex (wicked) change and a way forward.

This is the first book to draw together the evidence on the 'case' for skills and to examine the policies appropriate to achieving 'skills for all'. Learn to succeed: argues that raising skill levels is crucial to both economic success and social inclusion; demonstrates the benefits of higher skill levels to people, to companies and to communities; synthesises a wide range of materials in one convenient volume, providing a reference source on the issues; deals with the issues at both national and local levels; sets out a clear agenda for action. Learn to succeed is essential reading for policy makers and practitioners in national, regional and local government departments and agencies, and is also recommended for students and academics on courses at undergraduate and graduate level in applied economics, education or public policy.

This book explores the economic and social development of the Western Balkan region, a group of six countries that are potential candidates for EU membership. It focuses on the key economic issues facing these countries, including the challenge of promoting economic growth, limiting public deficits and debt, and fostering international trade relations. Given the severe impact of the recent economic crisis on social welfare in the region, it also investigates the nature and extent of social exclusion, a factor likely to produce future political instabilities if not effectively addressed by a return to sustainable economic growth. The contributions explore these issues in light of the major influence of EU policy instruments and advice, which are currently guiding the economies along an accession trajectory to future EU membership.

Deindustrialization in the United States has triggered record-setting joblessness in manufacturing centers from Detroit to Baltimore. At the same time, global competition and technological change have actually stimulated both new businesses and new jobs. The jury is still out, however, on how many of these positions represent a significant source of long-term job quality and security. Where Are All the Good Jobs Going? addresses the most pressing questions for today's workers: whether the U.S. labor market can still produce jobs with good pay and benefits for the majority of workers and whether these jobs can remain stable over time. What constitutes a "good" job, who gets them, and are they becoming more or less secure? Where Are All the Good Jobs Going? examines U.S. job quality and volatility from the perspectives of both workers and employers. The authors analyze the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, and the book covers data for twelve states during twelve years, 1992–2003, resulting in an unprecedented examination of workers and firms in several industries over time. Counter to conventional wisdom, the authors find that good jobs are not disappearing, but their character and location have changed. The market produces fewer good jobs in manufacturing and more in professional services and finance. Not surprisingly, the best jobs with the highest pay still go to the most educated workers. The most vulnerable workers—older, low-income, and low-skilled—work in the most insecure environments where they can be easily downsized or displaced by a fickle labor market. A higher federal minimum wage and increased unionization can contribute to the creation of well paying jobs. So can economic strategies that help smaller metropolitan areas support new businesses. These efforts, however, must function in tandem with policies that prepare workers for available positions, such as improving general educational attainment and providing career education. Where Are All the Good Jobs Going? makes clear that future policies will need to address not only how to produce good jobs but how to produce good workers. This cohesive study takes the necessary first steps with a sensible approach to the needs of workers and the firms that hire them.

The implementation of sustainability initiatives on campuses is an essential component of promoting sustainability in the higher education context. In addition to reflecting an awareness of environmental issues, campus programmes demonstrate how seriously universities take sustainability at the institutional level. There is a lack of truly interdisciplinary publications that comprehensively address the issue of campus greening, and there is an even greater need for publications that do so at a truly international level. This book meets these needs. It is one of the outcomes of the “Second Symposium on Sustainability in University Campuses” (SSUC-2018), which was jointly organised by the University of Florence (Italy), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management” and the “European School of Sustainability Science and Research” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), in cooperation with the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme (IUSDRP). The book showcases examples of campus-based research and teaching projects, regenerative campus design, low-carbon and zero-carbon buildings, waste prevention, and resilient transport, among others. Ultimately, it demonstrates the role of campuses as platforms for transformative social learning and research, and explores the means by which university campuses can be made more sustainable. The aims of this publication are as follows: • to provide universities with essential information on campus greening and sustainable campus development initiatives from around the world; • to share ideas and lessons learned in the course of research, teaching and projects on campus greening and design, especially successful initiatives and good practice; and • to introduce methodological approaches and projects intended to integrate the topic of sustainable development in campus design and operations. This book gathers contributions from researchers and practitioners in the field of campus greening and sustainable development in the widest sense, from business and economics, to the arts, administration and the environment, and hailing from Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia.

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management is designed to promote theory and research on important substantive and methodological topics in the field of human resources management. Volume 36 focuses on key issues such as job search processes, human resource technology systems, pregnancy issues at work, and emotions at work.