Vision Formers

Businesses are facing an unprecedented shortage of skilled workforce to draw upon. To overcome this problem, we've got to find new ways of interacting with the next generation.

Much of the problem can be connected to an education system that is based far too strongly on building knowledge as opposed to skills. The trouble with knowledge is that it has a sell by date. What is useful to us one day is out of fashion or being replaced by something new the next day - particularly with the rate of change of modern society.

Of more benefit is an ability to work with problems, solve problems and create things - this is the baseline of what is important.

For example, a professional project manager is not just an engineer or construction expert. They will also have a business acumen to keep the business online, a communication ability to communicate ideas of how to achieve something, and a good listening capacity so that when they are talking to a client they can work with them to understand what it is that's really significant.

Businesses have got to get smart about how we can interact with young people in schools and tertiary institutions in order to provide learning and training opportunities. Through this we might just turn on those young people enough that they want to come and work with us when they graduate, or when they have accomplished a trade or other profession. At the very least this interaction would provide skills and experience that could be well used somewhere else.

We need opportunities through our education system for youngsters to be involved in a more active way than they are currently - at the moment contact is very superficial, if there is any contact at all. One way of achieving more active contact would be through what is known as "ghost projects" in schools, as suggested in our lead article by international education consultant James Harrison. This would be about allowing teachers to come along and say: I could go away with some of those problems and put them to my students, who could come up with a solution of their own. Whether the company uses that solution or not is beside the point. The main thing is that they are thinking about something that is real, where the outcome is not straight out of the box. And you never know - because the students are coming at it from such a totally different perspective, they may come up with some really interesting possible solutions.

Another way is getting schools involved in real projects. There is no reason why, when working on a school project for example, some part of the school couldn't be left unfinished so that the students themselves build on that as a working project. The resulting learning and excitement would make their educational experience so much richer and multi-dimensional.

The younger generations have a totally different outlook and expectations of life, and we need to connect with them so that we can understand them - and them us. For businesses, the immediate benefits come from getting ideas they weren't expecting. Longer term, it's about helping ensure the next generation are taught fundamental life skills that will also stand them in good stead as they enter the workforce.