Verizon will invest $44 million to increase access for and reskill Americans with limited opportunities through a free tech-focused career training program.
A new wave of awareness is hitting organizations. They are keenly observing the emerging skills for the future and building appropriate resource pools. But while this is the way forward, it is also one of the most significant ways to widen the chasm between those who can access better career options and those who cannot.
VerizonOpens a new window has announced that it will now partner with Generation, a non-profit organization, to invest over $44 million in workforce development. The partnership will increase access to Americans with limited opportunities to a free tech-focused career training program. The aim is to cover 26 cities by the end of 2022 and fits in with the goal of Citizen Verizon, which is to prepare 500,000 individuals for jobs of the future by 2030.
Reskilling is being treated as a top priority, but companies may exclude huge potential talent segments without a planned and inclusive approach in a rush to upskill. As the world moves toward a digital economy, the lack of a proper roadmap to train all skill pools will intensify the war for talent with just a few people continuing to compete for the same roles.
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Reskilling for Key Roles
Verizon and Generation’s online reskilling program will provide free resources and access to the various career pathways in the growing technology sectors. Some jobs include junior cloud practitioner, junior web developer, IT help desk technician, and digital marketing analyst. Each program is designed to take 10–12 weeks to complete on average. It will cover workers who are unemployed, underemployed, and losing jobs due to automation or due to the pandemic. The focus is to prioritize Black and Latinx applicants, women, and those who do not have a four-year degree.
This program has been designed primarily to reskill underrepresented workers and equip them to handle new career paths with the same knowledge and expertise as others. At some level, the program seems to indicate a deep connection between reskilling and inclusion.
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Reskilling and Inclusion
Several research studies that reflect the positive correlation between reskilling and inclusion, based on gender, race, and age.
Gender
The International Monetary FundOpens a new window (IMF) has shared that digital technologies will likely eliminate 11% of the jobs women currently hold. This is higher than the percentage for men’s jobs.
Women hold 56% of university degrees overall but just 36% of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degrees, and they make up only 25% of the STEM workforce. A World Economic Forum and LinkedIn studyOpens a new window also revealed that just 22% of AI professionals and 12% of machine-learning experts are women. These are evident indicators of the gender gap that threaten to widen further if reskilling efforts are not targeted toward this segment.
Race
McKinseyOpens a new window conducted a detailed study to understand the impact of automation and new technologies on Black communities. The data showed that Black individuals were underrepresented in five occupation categories with the lowest expected displacements. They were overrepresented in three categories with the highest expected displacements.
The trend is clear – a higher number of Black individuals can easily be displaced from jobs, thus making their reskilling an imperative. A linked report from McKinseyOpens a new window shares how retraining in just five occupation categories would actually result in mitigating almost 60% of the risk to the African American workforce.
Age
56% of respondents have shared in a Randstad surveyOpens a new window that keeping older workers in the workforce is crucial for success. The demand for STEM roles is rising, but the lack of effort toward reskilling the aging workforce and personal biases (68%) have made it harder for them to learn new skills. This could increase the unemployment levels among a potentially talented candidate pool.
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Several studies are sharing what HR teams and leaders should already know. Reskilling can become a tool for inclusion if planned and implemented strategically. With several reskilling initiatives already in play, it will be interesting to see how they improve inclusion in the workforce.