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World Youth Skills Day 2022

By General Sir James Everard KCB CBE 
Published: July 12, 2022
READ TIME: 2 minutes
Minister, Sajid Javid was once ridiculed for likening the NHS to ‘Blockbuster in the age of Netflix’. Yes, this comparison / case study may have been lacking in originality, but I applaud both his honesty and the analogy because I know exactly what he meant. First, you have to be willing to adapt (in other words you can fail doing what used to be the right thing for too long) and be bold. Second, it takes leadership to overcome the ‘institutional inadequacy’ that torpedoes real change. And third, if you take care of your people and empower them, they will take care of your customers (a twist on putting patients first yet with a better chance of success, because most of us think about ourselves first).

First, you have to be willing to adapt (in other words you can fail doing what used to be the right thing for too long) and be bold. Second, it takes leadership to overcome the ‘institutional inadequacy’ that torpedoes real change. And third, if you take care of your people and empower them, they will take care of your customers (a twist on putting patients first yet with a better chance of success, because most of us think about ourselves first).

It sounds so simple and is also an approach with much wide applicability – including in the area of digital skills development – and so why do we seem to struggle with removing barriers and creating new opportunities? World Youth Skills Day is observed annually on 15 July (if fits between Bastille Day on the 14th and World Emoji Day on the 17th) and is a good time to ask this question. More so given some stark facts on UK youth employment with 438,000 young people aged 16-24 unemployed in January-March 2022, with 77,000 unemployed for over 12-months. In simple terms young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than older adults. They are also more exposed to labour market inequalities and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. This at a time when the tech vacancies have grown post-Pandemic by 191% and make up a higher proportion of all the jobs available in the UK, with more than 64,000 vacancies. A win-win or a match made in Heaven. No. Our existing systems have and are continuing to fail the learning needs of young people.

Nick Pope (another old soldier / armchair general) and I were musing about the challenges of recruiting digital natives, not only for the British Army as we work to ‘sense, make sense and act’ jointly in a multi-domain environment, but in business. Our verdict? We need to transition from Blockbuster to Netflix and modernise the way we recruit, upskill, and retain our workforce. This will mean disrupting traditional approaches. This will mean seeking out the under-utilised talent pools we have – including our youth (and the old, the under-employed and unemployed), convincing them that they can do it with tech skills champions to show them the way. If Pope were King, he told me he would create digital skills academies, with aptitude testing to access new talent pools and really deliver on levelling up. I agree. It is time to be ‘big and bold’ and try something new and creative. We may find this leap difficult, but as every old Prussian general knows, boldness can lend wings to intellect and insight; the stronger the wings then, the greater the heights, the wider the view, and the better the results.

Learn more about how you can source, recruit and deploy diverse new talent into your organisation or find untapped talent within your existing workforce. Explore Discover Potential.

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