Despite the fact that technology can speed up more procedures and free people from mundane tasks, there is still a critical need for a qualified workforce that is able to work with and understand technology. Employees will require constant training to stay up with employment demands as new roles develop and skill requirements evolve swiftly. If technology causes job losses, there will be consequences for labor mobility, especially if there are insufficient reskilling programs to ensure that displaced people can shift to other jobs.
While digital change has enormous potential, the pandemic has additionally revealed the current digital divide between countries. As high-income countries increased digital adoption, many low-income countries lagged behind due to a lack of critical enablers such as dependable and affordable internet connection. They will be unable to reap the benefits of technology since systems are becoming increasingly reliant on internet connectivity. This will contribute to the inequitable distribution of benefits from the digital economy, further disadvantaging low-income countries.
At the same time, the pandemic also accelerated attempts to improve mobile device and internet access, decreasing the digital gap. However, there is room for improvement in terms of policy enablers and stakeholder collaboration. Considering digital skills, many of the most effective initiatives require the participation of stakeholders such as governments, employers, workers, and training institutions.
Skills shortages could get worse in 2023 in Asian nations like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. As a result, companies in these nations have started upskilling and reskilling their workers, and government organizations are also promoting programs to address the issue.
This involves setting up workshops, providing online classes, and working with government organizations. To start with, Huawei ASEAN Academy has worked with 37 top higher education institutions in Thailand and assisted in the development of over 26,000 ICT professionals there. Additionally, Huawei plans to teach approximately 10,000 technologically skilled youths by 2023. Recently, Huawei launched a partnership with a number of Thai government agencies, academic institutions, and industrial partners to share ideas and create an ICT personnel development program that is soon expected to become a national master plan.
Huawei Prepares ICT Professionals
In 2015, Huawei's ICT Competition helped over 1,000 top Thai university students. Last year, through the Huawei ICT Competition 2022-2023 Thailand digital talent development program, Huawei plans to hone the ICT skills of about 200 gifted youth. Following December 9, 2022, this program continued conducting training for ICT competition and exam certification through reward announcements and job fairs.
In the past few years, Huawei ASEAN Academy (Thailand) has worked with 37 top higher education institutions and helped in the development of more than 26,000 ICT professionals. Huawei's future plans include training over 10,000 digital youths in 2023 alone and continuing to put the important recommendations made in the white paper into practice.
In Thailand, Huawei has a history with ITC talent development. It launched its first Asia-Pacific Seeds for the Future program in Bangkok past August of last year, during which talented youth from 16 different nations learned about Thailand and participated in a demanding 15-day tech boot camp.
AWS also introduced the AWS industry Quest, a new interactive, game-based learning experience designed to help people and organizations acquire the knowledge necessary to create solutions for common use cases in their sector.
AWS Prepares Individuals to Prepare Solutions for Common Use Cases
In AWS Industry Quest: Financial Services, participants can customize their avatar, take over a virtual financial services organization, rename it, and raise the company to industry leader status by completing solution-building tasks. Each solution takes about an hour to finish. Players can finish over 20 solutions in any order, which have been handpicked based on feedback from AWS industry experts and financial services customers.
Through the AWS Industry Quest: Financial Services professionals and teams can learn and build solutions related to fraud prevention, data lakes for financial services, serverless deposit accounts, and more when more industries come into play. This program is accessible in the company’s digital learning platform, AWS Skill Builder, which is a part of the Skill Builder subscriptions.
Both individuals and organizations can subscribe to the platform to engage in experiential learning from the practical experience that AWS offers. The main objective of AWS is to help organizations of any size to bridge the skills gap. Thanks to this program, AWS has helped train over five million people with cloud skills across APAC since 2017.
Aside from AWS and Huawei, Microsoft and LinkedIn have also announced the next step in the Skills for positions program, which will provide free access to 350 courses and six new Career Essentials Certificates for six of the most in-demand positions in the digital economy.
Microsoft and LinkedIn Help Students Advance their Skill Development Journey
Microsoft and LinkedIn are planning to provide 50,000 LinkedIn Learning scholarships to help students advance in their skill development journey.
Microsoft hopes to help train and certify 10 million people for in-demand jobs by 2025. This initiative builds on the Global Skills Initiative, which provided access to digital skilling resources to 80 million job seekers worldwide. Microsoft has engaged 14 million learners in Asia to date through LinkedIn, Microsoft Learn, and non-profit skilling initiatives. More than 280,000 of these students were from Malaysia.
Microsoft analyzed job listings using data from LinkedIn and the Burning Glass Institute to identify six of the program's most in-demand roles: Administrative Professional, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Systems Administrator, Software Developer, or Data Analyst are all examples of administrative positions. Locally, the top six LinkedIn Learning Pathways were: Project Manager, Digital Marketing Specialist, Financial Analyst, Data Analyst, and Sales Development Representative are all examples of critical soft skills.
The new Career Essentials Certificates aim to help learners in bridging the gap between basic digital literacy and more advanced technical skill training, as well as gaining certifications that will be useful in getting employment. Once a learning pathway is completed, learners will obtain a LinkedIn badge to show employers their certificate and fluency in the skillset.