The Manufacturing Institute, together with the Atlantic Council and the Alcoa Foundation, released the report, Global Responses to the Skills Gap: Emerging Lessons, which outlines four major challenges to closing the skills gap: managing demographics, building flexible skills, expanding work-based learning, and partnering to achieve scale.
The report states that to address the issue of creating a successful talent pipeline “national quality standard for certifications” is needed and should be led by a cross-national training methods institute. The findings are based on the assessments of the strengths and challenges of methods used in a variety of countries, such as Finland, Germany, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, as well as in South Korea and Mexico, which are used to develop a framework for discussion.
Compiled by Atlantic Council Global Business & Economics Senior Fellow Alexei Monsarrat, the report is a critical outcome of a global symposium hosted by the Manufacturing Institute, Alcoa Foundation, and Deloitte in 2012, where participants exchanged best practices and generated strategic manufacturing insights and recommendations for senior executives and policymakers. This is an initial effort to gather those lessons and looks at the evolution of government programs over the last several years, with special focus on the trends in how businesses and government are increasingly working together.