and industries except Health and Healthcare and Accommodation, Food and Leisure (which seek
greater flexibility on hiring and firing practices) and Agriculture and Natural Resources (which
seeks greater flexibility on setting wages). Notable exceptions include China, Indonesia, Germany
and the Philippines, which favour changes to immigration laws on foreign talent as more likely to
promote talent availability, and Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, which seek flexibility on hiring and firing
practices. Government funding for reskilling and upskilling is considered a relatively low priority only
in Colombia and Argentina, where only about 10% of companies indicate its potential to increase talent
availability.
The second-most welcomed public policy is increased flexibility on hiring and firing practices,
with one-third of organizations surveyed recognizing its impact. Such flexibility is most desired in the
Electronics (50%) and Oil and Gas (48%) sectors. Childcare availability and better access to transport
are seen as less effective, with several exceptions, such as in Israel, where 40% of the respondents
identified an increase in the quality or access to transport as key to improve talent availability.
Meanwhile less than one in five respondents expect changes to labour laws to accommodate remote
work as a key policy for talent availability. Here, the outliers are organizations in Telecommunications and
Non-Profit sectors, and those in Switzerland that seek a better policy and regulatory environment for
remote work domestically and across borders.
While companies tend to focus primarily on government help with adult skills training, they do
not neglect the importance of better connecting childhood education to evolving workplace skill
sets. Improvements to school systems was ranked the most promising public policy to improve talent
availability in the Telecommunications industry, and the second-most promising in the Chemical
and Advanced Materials; Education and Training; Financial Services and Capital Markets; Government
and Public Sector, Insurance and Pensions Management; Non-Governmental and Membership
Organisations; and Research, design and Business Management Services industries. Notably,
improvements to school systems were valued as a means to attract skilled talent by a greater fraction of
SMEs than large corporations.
A majority of companies in every country and industry express a net positive outlook for talent
development of their existing workforce in the next five years.
As shown in Figure 5.9, workforce development is most commonly considered the responsibility
of workers and managers, with 27% of training provision to be furnished by on-the-job training and
coaching. This share may be compared to the 81% of companies noted at the beginning of this chapter
that will employ learning and on-the-job training as a key strategy to deliver their business goals – with
a particularly strong prevalence in the Electronics and Consumer-Goods Production industries, where
companies almost unanimously express that this is a key part of their business strategy.
At 24%, companies assert that almost as a large a fraction of training will be provided by internal
training departments. Fifteen percent will be provided by employer-sponsored apprenticeships.
External training solutions complete the list, with licensed training from professional associations
(13%), private-sector online-learning platforms (12%) and universities and other educational
institutions (10%) comparatively disfavoured compared to company-led initiatives for closing
skills gaps. This trend is most apparent in the Employment Services sector, which will look to
on-the-job training and coaching for 38% of skills training, and external solutions at a rate 15% below
the global average.
As shown in Figure 5.10, companies overwhelmingly expect to fund their own reskilling
and upskilling programmes, with a few notable geographic exceptions, such as Georgia, where this
funding mechanism ranks third, behind co-funding across the industry and public-private hybrid
funding. At 16% engagement among surveyed companies globally, co-funding across the industry
is forecast to be the least utilized funding model for skills training, with particularly low uptake in the
Netherlands (2%), Switzerland (4%) and Romania (5%). On average, Europe exhibits the highest
uptake for intra-industry co-funding, with this mechanism least common in Sub-Saharan Africa,
East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
Other common funding mechanisms including free-of-cost training, which is a key funding mechanism
for more than half of Employment Services and Mining and Metals firms; government funding,
which is expected to be utilized by more than half of Electronics firms; and public-private hybrid funding,
which is emphasized by almost half of surveyed Non-Governmental and Membership organizations
as well as companies operating in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing.
Learning habits are evolving to make training faster and more flexible. Figure 5.11 shows
that companies expect 25% of their training programmes to last less than one month during
2023–2027. Only 17% will last longer than a
5.3 Ta l e n t d e v e l o p m e n t
Future of Jobs Report 2023 57
