For the last few months I have been leading the review of one of the world's largest human capital services companies. With more than a dozen business units and subsidiaries in Australia alone and locations spanning the globe, the review has touched on the pointy end of engagement with government and the public sector, labour and education policies and the rise of knowledge and intellectual property as a service component. While conducting the review I have also had the fortune of seeing global research and data on the movement of labour, migration of skilled and unskilled workers and the dynamics involved in developing economies strengthening education infrastructures and skills training for the future.
As some of you will know I have also, in the last twelve months, spent time reviewing higher education frameworks in South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia. On a recent trip to South Africa I noted a move towards consolidating vocational and technical education across what we in Australia would call TAFE. In Malaysia just over ninety technical education secondary schools now operate as a part of the k-12 education system. In Sri Lanka, a World Bank project is rebuilding University infrastructure to support student and academic management. In Indonesia I presented a keynote at the "Transforming Education in Indonesia" and saw, first hand, the rise of the University sector and a burgeoning private education system.
My point of course is that right around our region a transformation is taking place - as economies grow, the education system as a source of skills supply is also growing. This begs the question what is happening in Australia and are we indeed moving forward to address the key fundamental challenges of our time in a way that strengthens our focus on the future? Or are we just treading water and talking more about what to do instead of getting on with the job?
The time has arrived for a comprehensive National Workforce Planning Strategy that sets our focus on the demands of our economy today and into the next ten years ahead.
For the first time in Australia's history we are confronted by a series of challenges that will have significant economic and social impacts on every part of our daily lives. Some of it is no doubt related to the proposed implementation of a carbon management system, but looming large is the lack of any real National Workforce Planning Strategy. Without such a strategy Australia will not be as prepared as she could be for the coming changes to the domestic, regional and international economies. So, what are some of these challenges and how should we go about addressing them? What exactly is a National Workforce Planning Strategy and who should be involved? Who should own it and how quickly do we need to implement it? Before answering those questions let's first take a look at some of the challenges:
1. Challenge one: the aging workforce: Since the turn of the millennium the aging workforce has played a pivotal part in the development of both economic and social policy. Like many western countries there has been a general trend of an increasing aging population and a decreasing number of young people to supplement their places in the economy. On the one hand industry, business and government have grappled with how to deal with what had back then, been a problem that needed to be planned for. Eight years later we continue to be confronted by the problem with few, if any, solutions having been put in place. An additional dynamic to an aging population is the improvement in health care and health outcomes. Life expectancy is increasing and mortality rates are dropping as further medical advances are made through technology and breakthroughs in medical research (The Australian Bureau of Statistics: Scenarios for Australia's aging population [1]). By the year 2050-51 life expectancy for men will increase to 92.2 years and 95.0 years for women while the retirement age continues to range between 60 and 65 years. That means more and more Australians will be in retirement for periods of up to 35 years. Importantly, the number of Australians aged 85 or older was only 1.4% of the total population in 2002. By 2051 it is projected that the total number of Australians aged 85 and older could exceed 9%. With fewer young people to supplement the places of retirees in the workforce and higher life expectancy a number of key problems will face Australia in the years and decade ahead. These challenges include taxation with fewer tax payers does this mean higher rates of future taxation? Increased costs for healthcare and aged care, lower unemployment rates but higher job vacancy rates.
2. Challenge two: climate change and preparing Australia for a new world: There is little doubt in the minds of the majority that climate change is already having a significant impact on Australia and our everyday lives. One need look no further than the Murray Darling basin as an example, or for that matter lower than average rain fall across New South Wales. As temperatures rise even the best case scenarios tell us that what we do today will have changed in the short space of a decade. Changes to the seasons reflect changes in food production while the reported peak in oil supply will impact everything from supply chain and logistics through to infrastructure and energy. Indeed, in the case of oil, impacts to economies world-wide are already being felt - including here in Australia. As demand for bio-fuel increases there will also be further impacts on food production and supply. The soon to be implemented carbon trading system in Australia will also play a role in the changing make-up of our workforce as some jobs become redundant and as others are invented. The Governments peak scientific body, the CSIRO recently predicted that a proposed carbon trading scheme could result in more than 3 million workers needing to be retrained and re-skilled by 2015.
3. Challenge three: internal migration: Our population is migrating which is forcing more demand on regions where previously demand and supply were consistent. The Sunshine Coast is an example. On the one hand household earnings have increased by 70 per cent, faster than the national average of 60 per cent. This has created greater spending on consumer and retail goods, property and general services. In addition, there is a significant increase in migration for the age groups 30-45 with one or more children under ten on top of the increase in net migration from people over the age of 55. So if you take those figures you would know that when household incomes rises, consumers spend more - this means greater demand for workers in retail and hospitality (as an example). For those migrating between the ages of 30-45 with children under ten, this creates greater demand for school teachers and childcare workers, while in the over 55 age group greater pressure is put on the health sector and therefore an increased need for nurses, doctors, dentists etc.
4. The maturity of higher education in developing countries: as someone who has travelled right across the Southern Hemisphere and seen a number of education systems, I can tell you that Universities and vocational technical training institutions are growing in both strength and achievement. When I visited Sri Lanka last November and met with the leader of a World Bank project who were tasked with consolidating student and academic management across all of that countries public universities, I was left with the impression that the quality of education delivery would only increase. In Malaysia I had discussions with the Deputy Director General responsible for high school technical and vocational education - yet another example of the system being strengthened in order to retain students in the Malaysian education system. At the Smart Schools conference held in Malaysia in 2007, Deputy Prime Minister Razak also made the point that education was key to Malaysia future success and that young Malays needed to think in Bhasa and act in English as well as thinking in English and acting in Bhasa.
So, they are some of the challenges we are faced with. Not in ten or twenty years time, but now, today. A National Workforce Planning Strategy is a framework that draws together all of the stakeholders in the education to employment supply chain to begin work on an active and executable plan that can be readily implemented. It is also a bi-partisan approach in so far as it calls for unions, the business community and governments to join together to assess the supply and demand issues, more importantly a tool, a forum, through which education and employment policy can be guided. Some have argued that Skills Australia is already seeking to address these issues.
It is addressing some, but not all of the policy areas that need to be collaboratively worked on. In recent months Sharan Burrows and Heather Ridout have both called for a similar approach - now the talk has to end and the work begin. If we are honestly going to confront the major education and employment challenges we face today and in the next ten years we need all the stakeholders involved and ready to go.
Matthew Tukaki is Director of SansGov and leads the organizations government policy, advisory and services practice. Matthew is the former General Manager of Education at IT&T Education, former Head of the review into Knowledge and Information Management Strategies at both the Joint House Department of the Parliament of Australia and the Australian Communications Authority, former Head of Government, Knowledge Management and Education at Dattatech Samsung SDS and former Chairman of both the National Skills for Schools program and the Government Policy Advisory Panel.