 It's very cold here. I get the wind, so I can survive somehow. So I guess when you close the doors, then we start, yeah? OK. Yeah, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you for getting up so early for us. And welcome to this world economic session, new skills for fast moving industries. My name is Manuela Kaspar Klöhrich, and I'm the editor-in-chief of Deutsche Welle, which is Germany's international broadcaster. You have the chance to ask your questions later in the discussion, so raise your hands and introduce yourself. But you can also share your thoughts by using the hashtag AMN, not that I said wrong, AMCN23NC. OK, AMNC23, that's correct, OK. Yeah, the basis for this panel today is the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report. And you probably know it explores how jobs and skills are set to evolve over the next five years. And it clearly states that there is a skills gap coming up, a very dramatic skills gap in some fields. And to give you a figure, more than 70% of executives in fields like electronics and energy say their biggest stumbling block in transformation is a lack of workforce skills. And of course, workers are hit two, six, and every 10 workers will require training by 2027 to help them keep up with new technologies. So quite dramatic figures. And to discuss it, I'm joined by an esteemed panel, which I'd like to introduce you to you now. First, ladies first, Emilia Stominova-Duh. I said it correctly, Hach. You have been Slovenia's Minister of Digital Transformation since June last year. And your ministry oversees the country's digitization strategy. To my left is Niza Ben-Negi. He has been Tunisia's Minister of Communication Technologies since August 2021. And his ministry is responsible, among other things, for looking after the transformation of Tunisia's IT and communications sectors. George Xu, to my right, is CEO of Airbus China, a very important job, based here in Tianjin. And he has all Airbus commercial aircraft business in China. Peter Brown from the UK is PWC's global leader for people and organization. And he's a human resources expert. And Paul, Paul Xu, is a businessman, chairman, and president of Junior Achievement China, the nonprofit runs practical courses for young people on workforce readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. And you told me that there are 95,000 volunteers, if I recall correctly, something like that. So also a huge task. So let me start with you, George, now. In the next five years, which roles are going to be the most difficult to recruit for Airbus? I am very honored to be the first one. As you said, I'm coming from Airbus. China is 20% of the market. Airbus in China has been growing very fast. We have developed a lot of new jobs on yearly basis. In the last couple of years, even in the COVID, we have a 15% to 20% increase of the headcount on yearly basis. And if you ask them what kind of job is really on the top of the priority, we are difficult to find it in the market. I would say there are several things for us. One thing is this industry is in the crossroad for kind of decarbonization transformation. And we are hunting everywhere for the talents who has expertise, who has a network in the green energy and to make the aviation a more sustainable way. This is one thing. The second thing is about digital. Digital services is the key for us to secure the safety operation of the aircraft in the airline. And the aircraft itself creates a lot of digital data. And we also use the data to develop the next generation of aircraft to better serve our customer. So the digital services is one of the area we are also eager to have the new talents to come. We work together with us. The third thing is about export control. Because our aircraft industry is somehow a quite sensitive industry. It's a very strategic industry. And some of the technology can be due use. This is why there are many regulatory restrictions everywhere in US, in Europe, somewhere also in China to avoid sensitive technologies to export to what they don't want to export. So we are living in this world with a lot of geopolitical complexity. This is why we have to be careful to be 100% compliance with all the regulatory limitations. So export control is one of the area we want to develop in the next few years to develop a team capable to protect the company, avoid any misunderstanding or avoid complex problems. And into the trap, complex trap. Now, George, when you say you're hunting everywhere, like for people who have the green skills, if I may call it like this, where is everywhere? Is everywhere really everywhere? Like all over the world? Here, if you talk about green, yes, where Airbus is hunting everywhere. But here in China, I think we put a lot of folks on China because there are an ecosystem here. In China, we want to find some talents from this ecosystem to help us. And by the way, we are also not only focused on external candidates. We are talking about also internal candidates. Some of the people, maybe they don't have the background. They don't have this hard skill. But we can develop them with the hard skill if they are quick learner, if they have a willingness to learn. And we have a lot of opportunity and platform to help them to grow. So it's really a question to say, don't only hunt people outside of the organization. Look at our own organization. Plenty of young people, full of ambition, full of talent, they have a strong willingness to learn. Why not? Give them an opportunity. OK. Lisa, you are minister in Tunisia. And what kind of skills are business leaders in Tunisia looking for? What's your experience? First of all, I am happy and very pleased to be with you in this panel to discuss about these hot topics. Maybe at the beginning, I would like to mention that in general countries and companies that are able to attract and retain the IT skills and digital skills will lead and will be successful in profiting from the IT opportunities in general. This is the main challenge. It means that it's no more about education and training. It's more about attracting and retaining. This is the first things that need to be considered. The second aspect that needs to be considered also is the well definition of the IT jobs and the IT career pathways. That's why at a national level, we need a national framework in order to well define the IT career pathways to help the recent graduates to move in their career path and also to help the enterprise and the companies to well define the IT jobs and the IT career pathways. So the second challenge is to set in place a framework in order to well define the IT jobs and to well define the IT career pathways. The third point that is important, actually, Indonesia, like in other places around the world, the IT market offers job opportunities for young people. That's why we need to think about rescaling, recycling in order to have the needed IT workforce. And at the end, I would like to mention that the IT jobs are more and more hybrid jobs and that require many skills and abilities that are not, by default, taught together at universities and academic institutions. That's why we need to modernize. We need to update and review the curriculum, academic curriculum, and the programs at university. So we have four challenges to consider in order to have the IT workforce at the national level. So we need to think about education and reforming. We need to think about how to retain, attract and retain. We need to well define the IT jobs and the IT career pathways. And we need also to have this framework in order to well define the IT skills and digital talents at the national level. I guess you need to move fast as well because otherwise your IT experts are leaving the country, which is often a problem, because as we heard from George, they are not enough worldwide. Yes, especially in Tunisia, we suffer a little bit from brain drain of IT engineers that are leaving the country to go to Europe or to go to the Gulf countries. And this is really a challenge, how we attract them and how we retain them and to provide for them the needed environment to stay in the country. Yeah. Emilia, when you speak to business leaders in Slovenia, what are they asking you to improve for readiness with regards to the changing job environment? Lower the taxes, I'm just kidding. So in Slovenia, I just recently received the analysis of the European market. And Slovenia is the country where our companies are reporting that they lack IT engineers the most. The most? In Europe? Yes, in the European Union. So why this is the case? It's not only the brain drain because it happens all around the world, but it is also because of the huge demand. We have a lot of IT companies. And when we are speaking about digital skills and competencies, we must be aware that not only the IT jobs need people with digital skills and competencies, but nowadays, all the jobs need digital skills and competencies. So it's not only the ICT sector, but also the journalists, the media sector, also the health sector, even the teachers nowadays need the ICT skills and competencies. So what are the businesses asking us is to have a school reform where we are going to introduce these digital skills and competencies to incorporate them in the formal education, but also to provide additional informal training where people in a faster manner will get the skills and competencies that are now needed in the industry, not only in the industry, but also in the public sector as well. And can you provide that? What the business leaders are asking you? Yes, we are trying to. So of course, the school reform, this is a longer process. In Slovenia currently, we are building this reform. In addition, we have published several tenders. So we're starting different projects for skilling and upskilling of our population. Our goal is that by 2030, 80% of our population will have at least basic skills. So everybody, not only the ICT sector again. And one of the ways how we believe that we're going to have more ICT engineers is by involving more women, because as you can see here, there are not so many women in our field. And we see this as a huge potential. So one of our goals in Slovenia is as well to increase the percentage of women that are involved in the ICT sector. We have started close collaboration with the private companies. So we are asking them what are their needs? And then we're trying to provide short programs, education programs, training programs for three to six months where they will get the people. And as you mentioned, it's not important that they will be the experts already. But once they're in the company, usually people get the additional skills and competencies within the company if they are willing to learn. Now, as you were talking about women in the industry, I want to go back to George because he's very proud that you have quite a percentage of women in very important jobs at Airbus. Yes, and gender diversity is one of the top priority for the Airbus management. And especially in Airbus China, I'm very proud that my management team have 40% female, which is quite high. Even higher than where our headquarters have. I think it's mainly due to the talents of our female gender in this country. And we select those, promote those females not because of their gender. It's really because of their strong competence and their strong engagement. So on my back, I have my HR director, Lin Wei. She's a woman, she's a manager. And she's not the reason why we select so many women to be the management team member. She's one of the excellent one. Okay, thank you, George. Paul, going back or staying in China, what skills do you think the young workforce in China has and what are they lacking from your experience? Well, I've been here 30 years and working with young people. I'm talking about elementary school, junior high and high school kids. And in my opinion, college kids are too late for the work that I do for them. So I would say that being a software engineer at Bell Library, probably people know how old I am now. So I would say the soft skills. That's very critical. I'm sure that George would address the technology and Peter would talk about CPA financing. And so the minister would talk about the- You know what? Everybody wants to say already, okay. Yeah, so I mean, to me it's for Asia Pacific, in my opinion, soft skill is very critical. They are very good in solving problems, but I think soft skill is very critical. Like what? Like how to make friends. And Premier Lee mentioned about collaboration and how do we collaborate with each other and how do we have fun together? I mean, to me, those are very critical at workforce and the earlier we start and the earlier better for the community. For those people who probably wonder what is J8 Worldwide and J-Gina, we are a non-profit organization. A non-profit organization was created because of the government and the company. They don't do a lot of things that distract them. That's why we created a non-profit organization to do that. So we compliment the government and companies. So that's what non-profit is about. Junior achievement started about 104 years ago where businessman and government got together to say we got to educate the young people to understand what the economy can impact their lives. So J8 movement is about economic empowerment. For women in my organization, George has 40%. I got 98%. So that's what non-profit organizations excel because we have innovation from women. Their soft skill is better than mine. So non-profit organization plays a very important role to Asia Pacific in my opinion because we talk about especially J-Worldwide and J-Gina. We empower kids at young age how to be a chairman CEO. What is a business? What is a company? And we teach them to create their own company than we encourage them to become the leaders of the global companies. So that's what J-Movement is about, is produce leaders for either government and company. Where the company, they spend billions of dollars for employee education. And we're just saying that if you give me $20,000, we can give you 20,000 kids ready. To replace you, George. That's what we do. Not yet, I guess, not yet. Not yet, but that's what the young kids, they're ambitious, they have no fear. They have no fear and they're innovative. That's why I'm all for you. So I'm here for champion. Okay, now Peter, you are working at PWC. The future of jobs report says 60% of workers need training and future skills, but only half of workers have access to adequate training. So what can one do or what should one do? Well, I think of the same report. It says that as a world economic forum report, 40% of jobs will likely disappear or be dramatically impacted, right? So we've just released this week of the PWC hopes and fear survey. It's the largest survey of workers around the world. That's 54,000 cross industry lines, cross 46 territories. And we do that at least to work out what's on the mind of workers? What do they like? What don't they like? What will they want to change? And we do it actually as a bit of a mirror to the CEO survey. So we know that CEOs, 40% of them say their organizations, unless they change, they transform, then they'll be economically unviable in 10 years. Workers broadly agree with that. What's slightly concerning is the Gen Zs, the younger generation. Half of them don't agree with that. They think less things change, right? So I think that context of we are in a world of change. I think to the point you made around the Premier yesterday, Premier Lee yesterday, collaborating between business educators, policy makers to solve, let's face it, a worldwide skills shortage and challenge is essentially if we're gonna actually transform and respond to George, the points you made, the green economy, the new jobs coming from that, the impact of disruptive technology. And also, I think in an audience where there's probably a lot of people quite interested in the workforce and HR, a workforce that's getting older around the world. It's a sad fact that like we're all getting older, we're working longer. Okay, so I think we have this environment of change, right? To create change, deliver change, you need to people need that human impact. The human skills, problem solving, creative thinking, critical thinking, leadership, teamwork is so important. What the survey tells us around workers is, actually they're up for the challenge, right? They are positive around gen AI. They want to learn and develop new skills. And I know if you cast your mind back to the depths of the pandemic, at a time of existential crisis, I think we saw nations working collaboratively to solve for that. But I think so much credit to human beings and workers, right, extraordinary resilience, innovation, flexibility, agility to solve for that. And as we come out of the pandemic, I think that there are some cautionary things I think as business leaders we need to be focused on. One is that only 50% of people are actually fulfilled in their job and have meaning in their job. And that's a concern because it means there's 50% that aren't. And if they're not engaged, then they're unlikely to be that engine around innovation and creativity, what have you. The second point I just made, well, the second point would be around the gap between those who have specialist skills and those who don't. So 53% of workers say they have specialist skills. If you are in that cadre of people, you are more likely, even now, not withstanding the cost of living crisis, to ask for a pay rise for a promotion and to be much more demanding of your employer. You're also more likely to have access to skills from your employer and undertake those skills. And you're also much more aware of the impact of technology disruption and the importance of human skills. I would put it to you, we need the whole workforce actually to be engaged and motivated and empowered to deliver this sort of reinvention transformation. And I think a real focus around those that don't have specialist skills, right? I think there's not only a business imperative but a societal imperative there that there's a great danger in our survey, those that don't have specialist skills are almost ambivalent of the impact of technology. They don't really see the impact it's gonna have on their roles. They don't really see that their job will require new skills in the next five years. And alarmingly, a lot of them don't get easy access to upskilling opportunities in their organisations. So I think there's a great danger unless we respond to that, we're gonna have a whole swath of society that's actually largely irrelevant in the world of work. And I think to solve for some of the challenges, the transition to green climate change response, disruptive technology and other challenges we have, we've got to work together as business leaders, as policy makers, government to solve for that. Does it first mean raise the awareness that we have a problem in the future, talk more about it or what should one do as a business leader, for example? Personally, I think people are aware of the challenge, there's not a day goes by when I don't talk to an organisation or a colleague who's working with organisations around the world where probably within the first minute of talking to us, there'll be something around help, right? We can't attract, we can't retain the right skills for our business. And again, we know from our CEO survey in January, 52% of CEOs cite talent challenges, lack of appropriate skills as a real issue in terms of their inability to execute their business challenges, right? So I think, yeah, we're aware of the problem, right? I think just admiring the problem of the challenge is not enough. We've got to take action, right? So actually to address that. And for example, sorry, I'm talking a little bit here. Since some collaboration we're doing with the World Economic Forum around skills first. In many organisations, I would absorb sort of forward-looking organisations are really focusing on skills, right? And how they hire and attract people in non-traditional ways, right? So I think many organisations will hire people based on job titles, on experience, on degrees, okay? And actually, I think George, the point you made around, they often overlook the talent they've got within their own organisation. 37% of workers say that they have skills that aren't on their CV, that their employer doesn't really use or know about. Well actually, if you can unleash that potential, those skills, that's my example around the pandemic. People are really amazing things, right? We are a really creative and ingenious, right? If they're in an environment where they're empowered and able to develop and flourish, because we know they want to get those skills. George, we heard about soft skills. What kind of soft skill would you say is the most important for a job at Airbus? There are two kinds of skills I can try to explain a little bit what we want. One thing is about the way of communication and the way of collaboration. I'll give you one example, you will understand, that as of today, aviation is 2% of the global carbon emission. We are on the way to decarbon. We want to target 2050 as a year to have a net zero. It's a huge challenge because the fleet increase is still double the size every 15 years. So how can we have a net zero? One of the viable way is to develop a soft, sustainable aviation field. So in the future, we will not use the fossil fuel. We will use the soft, which is not coming from the fossil. This is one of the key ways for this ambitious target. But Airbus is an OEM for aircraft manufacturing. We are not the soft producer. We are not the soft distributor. We are not the soft end user. We are not a regulatory body. How can we promote soft in this? So this is an ecosystem that needs a lot of collaboration. We are not really sitting on the driving seats. But that does not mean we should not play a leading role. If we are active enough, we can use our ideas to communicate, to set up the airlines, to really proactively promote soft in a more efficient way. So I set up a team. Already in China, they asked me, we are not sitting at the driving seats. This is the first question, how can we do? But now with their active communication with different stakeholders, I see the result, very positive result. Many people are starting to perceive us as a leading role in this process. So this is the one thing I want to mention. The second thing is about the resilience. Resilience, that's one of the soft skills they import. Yes, because in the last three years, aviation is one of the industries that suffer a lot because of the COVID, travel restrictions. Aviation, as you can understand, is suffering really heavily because of these kind of restrictions. And we face a lot of run-down in the industry. We see the heavy financial loss of the airlines. Sometimes people start to be very frustrated. But we need the people who understand what we can control, do our best to manage what we can control, but also don't waste energy on what we cannot control. Try to frustrate yourself, demotivate yourself because something totally out of control. But can one learn resilience? I think that resilience is not born with. Resilience is something we need to learn. Everybody, including me myself, at the beginning of the COVID, I'm optimistic. Something this will quickly recover. But one year later, nothing happened. Two years later, even worse. At that time, people start to be frustrated, a lot of frustration. And at that time, it's the right time to test your resilience. And it's the right time to nurture your resilience. And all the people who have really passed this test have a kind of resilience embedded into their blood. Just with that. I would love to contribute to your question about resilience. I'm dealing with little kids. And I think it's very important to recognize and believe that little kids have resilience already. We must say they have it already. They know how to deal with it. And the GNZ is very typical. We think that, man, you're totally on the wrong track. They know what you're doing. And so our belief is the little kids have it already. It is adults who need to recognize that, to foster that, in other words, for habits. So in my opinion, to start to talk about soft skills, in addition, in my opinion, we need to address the issue of cross culture in Asia Pacific. So to me, forming habits is very important. So allow people to fail, how the corporate culture relate to them? How do you have a career planning for them? The HR director make a lot of difference. How do we groom the leaders for the future? The corporate got to get our act together to show our loyalty to our workforce. And we bring them in. We spend a lot of money. Then we spend billions of dollars. If the attrition rate is so high, I mean, we will never finish this session until years and years later. So I would table to change our paradigm, to see our employees, they have creativity, they have, and they have. That's the starting point. They help them to dare to dream and have a career planning for them. And train them continuously, obviously. And train them accordingly. And otherwise, it is a task. If it's a task without principle and policy, it will fail. It is not a program. It's a core value development. So JA is starting with core value development. So our model is using financial literacy to foster three things in our young people, especially in JA China. We say we use our curriculum to foster core value, your character. Your character is the head of your career. Again, our value is your character, your core value is the head of your career. The second is creativity. The United Nations had a study globally, creativity as the look it was born after high school, from 100%. Drop to which percent, George? George, give a guess. Peter. 30%. Ladies and gentlemen, it's 20%. So JA movement, JA China, is using our curriculum to boost that 20%, especially in China, let's say it's 20% to 30%. So when they go to workforce, you do not need to spend so much money on the JA China students. So creativity is what we believe. The third one is leadership. So everything we do is foster three things, core value, your character, and number two, your creativity, number three, your leadership. So I just want to continue that. So instead of on the soft scale, focus on skills, but let's focus on the value of that humanity of that person starting from there. Allow them there to dream, have a live plan, and live a high quality life, relax too. Okay, there to dream, Tunisia obviously needs its skilled people. And you already mentioned that it is not easy to keep the talent you have. And I guess it's probably not enough talent anyway. So what do you do so that they know Tunisia is attractive for me as an IT engineer or whatever to stay in the country because everybody is competing for this talent? Yes, first of all, I would like to mention that we have at the beginning the role of preparing the needed IT environment and the needed IT ecosystem. So this is the role of our ministry is to prepare the environment. And if our environment is well-developed, well-defined, so with this we can retain and we can have good job offers. We can have big companies. We can attract IT investment. So this is the main role of our ministry. And in order to reach this goal, so we have set in place a national digital strategy composed of eight important access of development. The first one, it deals with the legal and the institutional framework. So we have to continuously modernize and update the legal and the institutional framework in order to modernize the IT governance way and also in order to well-regulate the new initiatives of development and the new technological developments in the initiatives. This is the first important access of development. The second one is about social inclusion either digital and financial. So we have the role of to provide the citizens with the needed internet access, needed digital devices, needed the digital culture and expertise. So we also have the role of to well treat the problem of digital literacy also. So this is the second access of development. The third one is about the IT infrastructure either telecom or we have also to develop the cloud strategy and to enhance the hosting capability. So we have the role of developing the IT and the telecom infrastructure in our country in the first access of development. So it's about ego and we are working on digitalizing the administrative procedures in order to set in place a government portals in order to well serve citizens and businesses of course online. The fifth access of development is about cybersecurity and cyber-comparity. In our ministry we have three agencies responsible of that. And the sixth access of development is about data and how to use data in order to have the needed dashboards that will help us to anticipate, to take decisions and to do strategic planning and to set in place what we call now data-driven government. And in the seventh access of development it's about IT capacity building. And in this access we are working closely with the ministry of higher education in order to introduce new academic curriculum and new specialties to try to respond as much as possible well as in a better way to the market's needs. And also we are also working closely with the ministry of employment in order to set in place reskeeling and recycling programs in order because as I said at the beginning the IT markets actually it offer more opportunities. That's why with reskeeling and recycling we are offering opportunities for jobless and unemployed people. And at the end we have the IT entrepreneurship. Our ministry is actually responsible of the techno parks and cyber parks around the countries and we have the role of developing them, expanding them which is important. It's a way also to give the chance of having their own project to the young to have their own project. It's a way also to attract them, to facilitate for them to have their projects or own projects and their own startups. At the end we have added to this main access we have added the communication because we need communication in order to well manage your change and also cooperation with the private sector or cooperation, international cooperation in order to learn from the others, from the other experience. So this is our national strategy. The goal is to prepare the IT environment and to prepare the IT ecosystem to well develop the project at a national level and also to retain people, the IT skinner people. Well, it sounds like a huge task to be honest to me. Yeah, what all you have to do and going by what Paul said, you won't have much time. I mean, it will take quite some time but Paul said very clearly there's not much time. One has to act now to attract the kind of talent and to skill the workforce the way they need. Oh, what's your point? No, you do. And I think it's slightly more nuanced as well. I think picked up some of the points that you made around the development of these skills because I think actually as leaders, I think we need to ask the question, are we part of the problem, right? So again, 50% of CEOs will say they think they're all, there's a culture, they have a culture in their organization which is tolerant of small scale failures of appropriate kind of challenge to the status quo. And they think 5% of their leaders tolerate that. When you ask workers the same question, it's only 30%, right? So that's that point of if we want to innovate and we want to transform, innovation by its very nature requires the fact you're gonna make some mistakes, right? You can continually stretch the boundaries. If workers are in an environment where actually culturally, they feel it's not safe to kind of make a small scale error or to appropriately challenge and add to the debate and the development, then there's a bit of a problem. So I think there's a real call to action for leaders to really kind of have a look at that culture, right? And focus on making sure it is inclusive. It's embracing all ideas, all diversity, not just gender, all forms of diversity, such that we can solve those problems. But I think that that was a really interesting piece of data from what the workers are telling us. Because your point about Gen Z, right? They are a generation, they're an activist generation. They have an attention span, I think of eight seconds, right? They've been brought up on- Probably sufficient. Right, I'm the proud owner. I'm a proud parent of Gen Z, right? They've lived on their phones and tablets, right? And to your point, right, if they're not happy, they won't hesitate to jump onto something like fishbowl or glass door and tell the world like that about my organization and how it's treating me and then they'll probably leave, right? So I think a real focus around that generation. Okay, Emilia, two years ago you were resigned from Slovenia Strategic Council for Digitization over lack of investment in green and digital transformation. Now you are the minister. So what's different? Green, best work. But maybe first I would like to reflect about the creativity. Why people stop creating? Because they don't feel safe. If we want people to be creative, then we need to provide them a safe environment where they can experiment and where they can also fail and learn from that and then continue. So maybe this is just also our school systems are like that. You are not supposed to be wrong. You only need to be right, but that's not okay. And then how to attract the workers, how to compete with the rest of the world. In my humble opinion is, and what the government can do here to provide good public services. When people have good public health, when they have good public schooling where their children can attend good public schooling, then they feel satisfied. We as a government cannot do other things. We can provide, of course, the skills and competencies. We can invest and so on. But I think that this is the way how Slovenia can compete with the rest of the world. We have very good public education. We have very good public health system that is of high quality functioning. Well, we're working a lot on preventive health, which means that our workers are healthy and we believe this is one of the ways how we can compete. And then with the investments, yes. I believe that now we are investing much more. At the time it was only why I stepped out. It was because of the National Recovery and Resilience Fund that we have in the European Union. We had to restrict some of the other investments so we can invest more in the digital part. And also now when we have a ministry of digital transformation, we can coordinate all the investments in the digital. And we saw that we can be more efficient, that we can coordinate all the actions at different resources. So I believe that we will be more successful. Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, you can join the discussion. Please raise your hand if you have a question and introduce yourself briefly and tell us also who you would like to address the question to. But first of all, I'd like to ask George another question. George, the future of jobs report says increased geopolitical divisions will be responsible for labor market disruptions. Would you agree? For some extent, I agree. I agree that the geopolitical complexity has increased, created a lot of unpredictability on the labor market as well. For example, today, for some of the Chinese companies to seeking some special competence in the market, there are limitations. So generally speaking, I agree on this one. Okay, so this will be a problem and that's why resilience, as you mentioned, is one thing that's really needed as well also. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I think there's a question there, yeah, please. I am from EDH Zuri here and the first time I was invited to China was this national physics Olympiad and something back in the day and where 50 best students go around the Galco exams and straight to Beta and Tsinghua universities. And then, well, I mentored some of these students and then I see their career progression but what you're talking about is a lot about skills. How do you see that? From Switzerland, we see a lot of vocational training as a motor for progress. When I talked to my Chinese partners, they talk all about, oh, which university did you finish? And isn't there a mismatch somehow for the access to quality education? Does it need to be at the university? Maybe it's a broader question here. Thank you. Well, you're absolutely right for the past 30 years. The Chinese education came out and carried the tradition that in order to be fair and in front of the testing and everybody's fair. So the whole idea, education is prepared for testing. And how you are ranked determines possible in your future. So as a result of that, people are very concerned about which school are you from and that is the source of that. So that's the culture there. That's the way it is. It is nothing right, right or wrong but that's how we produce a huge workforce. They are very good at solving problems. When I was a graduate student and I compete with Korean students and so on and my Jewish professor then said, Mr. Chu, how many steps you can solve this Laplace equation? And I said, five. And the Seoul University says, professor Schwartz, I can do it in three. And also then here's a Chinese kid said, I can do it in two nodes. So that's how the training system is. So I think I'm very positive about the future. In 2021, China realized that the past 30 years education produced a certain type of workforce. So in 2021, a policy was issued that there's a double reduction so that it will reduce anxiety in the system. So now the system is, basically it's gonna be like a student-centered education. And to me that is very positive. The other one is quite similar to global education is called PBL. So participation-based learning. And I see that is coming. So I'm very positive about the future. And I think the next 30 years, I hope that we together will contribute to the transformation of education. So watch out, beta is coming with different type of mindset. To me that cross-culture, the soft skill is coming out. And in JA, we so far China has given seven meeting kids study PBL and student center in the past 30 years. So we intend to invest more in this arena. So to answer your question, the transformation started already. So watch out, they're coming. Okay, there's another question here. Okay, thank you everybody. I am Oscar Antonio, representing Global Shapers Community in Wanda Hap, Angola. In a time when we are discussing the adoption of core values by digital solutions, AI robotics, I would like to leave this question open to any panelists. I was still giving that much investment to the development and maintenance of human centered values as much as to the digital skills. So that each of us is responsible to hold tight those values and make sure that any technology adopt and keep them. Thank you very much. Very important question. Thank you for the question. Would you like to answer, Paul? Yeah, Oscar, I think it's a really good question. I think, so I said earlier on here, gen AI workers are broadly positive about it, more positive than many business leaders think. I think there are clearly ethics issues with the gen AI. There are bias challenges with AI. And I think you're having a strong and effective governance process around how you deploy and use gen AI is really important. I think we would say that I think humans being humans and workers being workers, if you put some controls and say you can't use it, they'll ignore you. They will do, right? And in the way they live their lives, they'll experiment with it. And I think our encouragement would be to nurture that, is to embrace that in a control, but just embrace it, but be cognizant of the downsides. And I think you're focusing on those human skills, right? So I often say, technology is just some amazing things, right? But it's actually working in concert with human beings, that human ingenuity that really brings the magic out, right? So I think Oscar, I hope that answers your question. Yeah, okay, thank you. I think there's another question over there. Hello, hi, my name's Omar Bauer. I'm a co-founder of Goodwall, a skills-based social network for Gen Z to learn and earn. We're on a mission to level the playing field for youth everywhere. My question for today's panel, and thank you for the session, in your various organizations, companies and countries, how are you paving the way or accelerating the path towards a skills-based economy, towards skills-based hiring and skills-based education? George, you've already answered a few of these topics, I think, but... I'm not sure. Your question is how you paved the way for the skill-based... Hiring. As I said, that's... One thing is, it's not only about hiring, it's about how to develop our employee. It's how to invest inside of the organization to give the employee an opportunity to obtain certain specific competence which the company needs, and the individual employee also needs as well. But also, for the external one, I think that one thing is... It's how to find the right channel to... To... I'll just give you an example. We want to hire some pilot to be the coach for the pilot. Okay? Yeah. Pilots being the coach for other pilots. Yes, because in our industry, we have a simulator. And those coaches will be a teacher on the simulator to teach other pilots to go through a kind of type certification process. But pilot is a very unique kind of people. How to find those skill, talent people. It has to go through a very dedicated, precisely targeted channel. This is the one thing. The second thing is that even you do it, you have to make sure how can you retain them for a long time. Exactly. This is a high competence, very, very competitive market where a lot of airlines are also hunting for those kind of very skilled pilots. So there are many things you have to do. Sometimes it's not only about the remediation package. It's also about your culture. It's also about what kind of opportunity you bring to those people. So the retention of those people is very important. And also, I would say that another thing what we need to, in our practice, we have set up a company in Tianjin. I give you one example. Which is the first final line of single-eye aircraft outside of Europe. We set up in Tianjin, a joint venture together with the Chinese partner. And at the very beginning, we know that it's extremely difficult to find the high quality labor for the structural assemble of aircraft in China. Because there is not this kind of commercial aircraft final assembly experience in China. So nobody has this kind of experience. So at the beginning, we find some best of the best. They are still disqualified. We train them. This is one thing. But finally, we say we need a pipeline. This is why we go to one important university in Tianjin to set up a collaboration relationship with them to embed our technical specs in their training program at the very beginning of the bachelor degree education. This is a way to ensure us a special pipeline to have every year some fresh blood and to enter into our final deadline to help this health growth of this industrial operation in this final deadline. OK. Yes, please. I would like to add that, for example, in Tunisia, companies are considering IT professional certificates and certifications when hiring. That's why in our university, we are already working on preparing the students to be certified. So universities in Tunisia are not only giving diplomas, but also preparing the students to be certified. Oh, OK. So one last question. Joanna, please. Joanna Bryson, Herdy School of Governance in Berlin. And I'm interested in AI regulation. And I was wondering how many people present knew whether their own national AI strategy was aimed at enhancing their workers and raising their wages or limiting and controlling wages so they can be more competitive on the international market. Emilia, would you like to answer? Yes, but since you're in Germany, probably we have the same politics, because we're in the European Union, so we're working on the AI Act now. And I don't have anything to share with you at the moment. It actually doesn't say anything about politics. So I don't know some national politics. No, in Slovenia, we haven't started yet to discuss that. So it's about time from your point of view, I guess. I loved what the panel was saying about enhancing individuals. And I just know that not every AI, national AI policy, is saying that some AI policies are aimed at making people helping keeping wages competitive, let's say that way. Paul, would you like to add something? AI, or you better not. As when you say controlling wages, do you mean keeping them down? I think the whole kind of governance of AI is something that's work in progress, and we need to get to a resolution of that. But the point around, hey, I just want to pick up on, right, the amount of workers in the world that have money left at the end of the month after they've paid their bills has dropped significantly. 37% of people say they have some money left over. 20% of the world's workforce have to do at least two jobs just to pay the bills. And so I think that means you've got workers that are stressed, right? They're stressed by their own financial circumstance. So that cost of living challenge we're seeing around the world. And I think, yes, I mean, then you've got the other complexities and opportunities that technology brings. But I think leaders, we've got to really pay attention to that and understand that and be empathetic to it. OK, so I think you point around, because what we are seeing as well is people being more demanding around pay, just in order to kind of, you know, solve for that cost of living in their own personal circumstances, doesn't answer your question around the governance, but it's just a point around the time. OK, and Mia likes to add something to that. But we are discussing now that we are living in a highly competitive world, which means there is a lack of workforce. And currently in Slovenia, we are at the lowest unemployment rate ever. So which means that we would like to use AI to get the workforce that we are currently missing not to replace the people. Because if we keep their wage lower, then they will come to China, they will go to UK and so on and so on. OK, so thank you very much for that very interesting discussion. We only could touch a few topics, but I urge you to look at the World Economic Forum's jobs report, future jobs report to have, to get some ideas. And what we learned today is we have to act fast and skills are not just the skills we know in the past. Skills are also soft skills. Look into your own company, train the people and create the kind of environment and framework also as a government. Thank you very much and please give our panelists a round of applause.