Collect information on what skills will be most...
Solving a problem must begin with defining it. That might mean, for example, canvassing employers in major and emerging sectors to learn their needs and then convening leading researchers and government officials to test, debate and lay out the results. It is critical to work with both traditional and new sources of information, such as online job markets, to develop real-time data on automation, skills, wages, job openings and mobility, creating as accurate and nuanced a picture as possible.
Any assessment should address both technical skills (specific domain expertise) and soft skills (such as mental agility,emotional intelligence, abstract reasoning and collaborative problem-solving). On the latter, China’s universities may not be doing enough. More than 70 percent of Chinese executives surveyed by the IBM Institute for Business Values said they had difficulty finding workers with quality communication skills;two-thirds said the same about working in a team environment;and 62 percent said the current higher-education system was not meeting the needs of businesses.(https://www.daowen.com)
While there is no set playbook for how best to conduct this skills mapping, there are some instructive examples. Singapore’s Skills Framework, developed in cooperation with employers,unions and governments, defines the skills needed to succeed in specific jobs, then facilitates the recognition of skills acquired by maintaining a database of approved courses. This is part of its Skills Future program, a systematic effort to make lifelong learning accessible, routine, and useful. Singapore is of course tiny compared to China. Still, the continuous re-skilling of the workforce is a common goal for any nation, and Singapore’s record in this area is enviable.