IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. How to accelerate skills acquisition in the age of intelligent technologies 1 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. CONTENTS Forewords | 3 Introduction | 6 Staying Still Is Not An Option | 7 Intelligent Technologies Will Reconfigure Roles | 9 Intelligent Technologies Are Subverting the Skills Mix | 14 Solving the Skills Crisis In Three Steps | 16 Are You Ready to Transform Learning In Your Organization? | 28 Appendices | 30 2 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. Foreword The issue at hand is one I take very seriously: and adaptive techniques can support more Employers face a global skills crisis that could hold personalized, lifelong learning—especially in older back the economic promise of intelligent workers and those in low-skill roles, who are often technologies. Well beyond today’s talent shortages, excluded from education and skills programs. digital innovations will continually and rapidly alter the demand for skills in the future. Incremental As a professional services company, Accenture’s changes to our education and corporate learning people make the difference in driving innovation and PIERRE systems will not be sufficient. delivering high-quality services to clients. Indeed, we are tackling skills challenges head on. We have In response to this crisis, business leaders must invested in large-scale skill building that leverages NANTERME completely rethink how to prepare their workforces, the latest advances in learning sciences, digital from anticipating the skills their organizations will applications and experiential techniques. These help Chairman & CEO, Accenture need, to how they will help people learn and apply our people develop diverse talents—combining new skills throughout their careers. For leaders creativity, analytical and digital skills. In the looking to drive growth in an incredibly competitive communities where we work, we are extending and rapidly changing business environment, apprenticeship programs to facilitate youth on-the- investing in people is both responsible and cost job learning. We are also supporting disadvantaged effective. people as part of our Skills to Succeed program, which is on target to equip more than three million The good news is that skills development is, itself, people with the skills needed to get a job or to build undergoing rapid advances. This report examines a business. the potential of new learning opportunities and offers recommendations for businesses, We are proud to once again support the B20 as it entrepreneurs and policy makers. shapes the education and skills agenda. We are pleased as well to collaborate with the G20 Young Among the recommendations, we call for teaching Entrepreneurs Alliance (G20 YEA) to offer fresh approaches that encourage individuals to develop a insights and recommendations for policy makers range of both technical and innately human skills, working hand-in-hand with organizations. We hope like empathy and critical thinking. We advocate a our unique analysis, combined with our own greater commitment to experience-based skills experience of reimagining skills development, will development, like on-the-job learning and help businesses and policy makers take the apprenticeships. And we describe how engaging necessary steps forward. 3 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. Foreword Call it the skills paradox: Small businesses and fast- The growing demand for new approaches to growing enterprises are drivers of the technology learning also presents small enterprises with BRUNO innovations and digital business models that are tremendous opportunities for disruptive growth in reshaping our world. But as these technologies the fast-changing education and training sectors. disrupt the nature of work, smaller businesses are Whether they offer technology or learning SANGUINETTI often the least able to reskill their own people. innovations to larger organizations and educational institutions, the most imaginative entrepreneurs Chair, G20 YEA Argentina The sheer scale and complexity of continuously must be on the lookout. reskilling workers can overwhelm organizations that lack the capacity to invest in training. According to We are delighted to have worked with Accenture to the OECD, workers in small and medium sized scope the impact of the digital revolution on skills enterprises (SMEs) are 50 percent less engaged in and jobs and to demonstrate how experiential training programs than those at larger learning can be a catalyst for addressing the skills organizations.i challenge for large and small businesses alike. As the G20 YEA puts the skills agenda at the We trust that this report will help policy makers and forefront of discussions at the G20 and B20 leaders of educational institutions put in place the meetings that culminate in Argentina this year, it is investments, incentives and infrastructure that will time for entrepreneurs to take advantage of new transform the way we teach and learn. learning techniques and approaches that will help create an adaptable future workforce more cost effectively than ever before. 4 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. “The future of work will be a race between education and technology.” Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina, host of the G20 2018. 5 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. It’s a race between education and their evolving skills demand. We analyze the changing importance of skills to different roles and the impact THE RACE technologies. Blockchain, AI and of intelligent technologies. advanced biosciences promise Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not about new efficiencies and growth technological skills. It is about cultivating the full range IS ON of skills, from the creative to the complex cognitive opportunities at a time when capabilities that the future workforce will need. leading economies are struggling Our diagnosis: Current education and corporate learning systems are not equipped to address the with weak productivity gains and, coming revolution in skills demand. The challenge is especially urgent for roles that are more vulnerable in some cases, slow GDP growth. to dislocation through intelligent automation. The But it’s easier said than done. impact is uneven across economies and industries, demanding targeted interventions. Industrial age education and training systems put Our proposed solutions: Learning with experiential these economic opportunities at risk. If skill-building techniques, shifting the focus from institutions to doesn’t catch up with the rate of technological individuals and empowering the most vulnerable progress, the G20 economies could lose up to people to learn. US$11.5 trillion in cumulative GDP growth in the next ten years. That’s equivalent to losing more than an Advances in the science of learning, paired with new entire percentage point from the average annual technologies, allow pioneering businesses to offer growth rate every year over that period. new approaches to learning. The challenge? Accelerating their adoption across all organizations, For this report, we look through the lens of the future large and small, and throughout education systems worker – from the shop floor to the boardroom, from in the G20 economies. the shop front to the back office – and we identify 6 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. The cost of inaction is staggering. The impact will differ by country and by industry, depending on how labor is distributed across STAYING Over the next decade, the 14 G20 different roles. China, for example, could forgo up to 1.7 percentage points from its annual growth rate; countries in our analysis could Mexico and South Africa 1.8 percentage points. miss out on as much as US$11.5 Economies with a stronger skills base may be better STILL IS NOT prepared, but could still lose big, as much as US$975 trillion of cumulative growth billion in the United States and US$264 billion in promised by intelligent Germany over the coming 10 years. Beyond the AN OPTION economic impact, the risk includes greater rates of technologies – if they can’t meet unemployment and intensified income inequality. (See Figure 1. For more details see Appendix 3: future skills demand. That Technical Annex: Skills Crisis: Measuring the Growth equates to forgoing more than an at Risk.) entire percentage point from their annual average GDP growth rate every year. 7 IT’S LEARNING. JUST NOT AS WE KNOW IT. Staying Still Is Not an Option POTENTIAL COST OF THE SKILLS CRISIS FIGUREIf G20 countri es1:a rePOTENTIAL unable to adapt the COSTsupply of s OFkills t oTHEmeet t heSKILLSneeds of the CRISISnew technological era, they risk forgoing up to US$ 11.5 trillion in GDP growth over the next 10 years “We should be talking Cumulative GDP growth at risk*, 2018-2028 more about learning 100,000 Figures in white – absolute values at risk, US$ billion Figures in blue – Additional average GDP growth at risk every year, % points of GDP growth at risk every year US$11. trn than about education. 1.1 %pts. $5,447 bn Education is about 10,000 1.7 % pts $1,970 bn processes and top- ) 2.3 %pts e $975 bn l $781 bn a S$ c $544 bn 0.4 %pts U s $513 bn 1.7 %pts down transmission of n g 1,000 $264 bn 1.8 %pts 0.6 %pts io o l $185 bn $12 bn ill $13 bn n $152 bn 0.5 %pts i B $131 bn ( $113 bn $119 bn 0.6 %pts 0.5 %pts 0.5 %pts knowledge. Learning is 1.5 %pts 1.8 %pts 0.5 %pts 0.4 %pts 100 a much wider concept. A lot of learning goes on 10 in non-educational Australia Canada Argentina South Italy France UK Germany Mexico Japan Brazil US India China Total Africa contexts, and today we Note: * Scenario assumes investments in intelligent technologies per worker in each country reach have a very large and current US investment levels in traditional technologies per worker.