 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I won't take much of your time. What I really wanted to say, I'm Piers Cumberlidge from the World Economic Forum, and I have the pleasure of actually looking after, looking over a number of these subjects that we're working on that all fall under a broad umbrella related to human capital. So I simply wanted to introduce myself, and if any of you have questions or would like to understand more about what the forum is doing in the area, do come and find me afterwards. I will be here in the room afterwards. So please don't hesitate to come and find me to talk about broader issues in the human capital dimension. And with that, I'll hand over to John Quelch to lead us away. All right. Thank you very much, Piers. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Listen, this is the World Economic Forum, okay? When I say good afternoon, you say... All right. We're getting there. At least we're getting there. All right. So we have done a scientific analysis of the human capital on the panel, and through that we have determined an order of participation which is a little bit different from the sequence on the stage. So I'm going to first turn to Jean-Yves from Publis's group. And the reason we're going to start with him is because Publis has in the last decade transformed itself from being a traditional media and marketing services company to one that now has a third of its business in digital technology. And so the question to Jean-Yves, how has Publis's handled the attraction and retention and development of talent, given that technology shift in your industry and in your company's strategy? Well, thank you very much, John. We have gone through a couple of transformations over the last few years. The first one is the one you described, moving from a marketing services to technology. And the second one is increasing our exposure to a former so-called emerging market that we call now fast-developing market because they have probably emerged a while ago. And in French, we would say they have submerged the rest of the world for planning for summer. So those two transformations have been paramount. And today, those two strategic pages of ours represent an excess of 50% of our business, planning to be at 75%. So how did we get there? It was a huge transformation from a human capital perspective. And we had to find unique people that could offer the combination of what we call IQ, EQ, and TQ. IQ we know, intellectual quotient. EQ is emotional quotient. Quite something you can find quite easily in the creative business. And technology quotient, which is new to our industry because we developed ourselves in areas where similar to Google and Facebook and we are competing with those guys in some areas to make everything more user-friendly, as we say. So a lot of opportunities for new kind of people were coming from the technology environment. And the biggest challenge for us was not only to give them the environment of an entrepreneurial company, startups. So the biggest challenge was more how do we live with a 56,000-people organization like you do in a startup, like you do in a VC, like operating like venture capitalists in the valley and trying to identify the room and the freedom, the opportunity to grow from an entrepreneurial standpoint for those people. Otherwise, they're going to set up their own business and they're going to leave and they're going to try to invent something by themselves. So we had to offer them some freedom but also some opportunity to grow and to be exposed to some of the largest challenges and opportunities that one can find on a global basis. And thanks God, as we are working with outstanding clients, they found that opportunity and this was strengthened by some partnerships that we developed with the Facebook and Google of the world and AOL and Microsoft and others. So the nice opportunities to partner, opportunities to create, to be their own entrepreneurs, operating like startups in a large group environment. So let me just ask you, in this transformation, how many people were not able to cross the chasm, not able to make the shift? You obviously gave them all a good chance to do so but in percentage terms, what percentage of the folks who you had before are still with you and what percentage couldn't make it? You know very well this industry and we are an industry with a very impressive charm and that's a curse and opportunity. It's a curse because we hate losing talent, we hate having invested in training and education and losing the people, the great people, all that. But sometimes it's also an opportunity because we could adapt ourselves and we could suggest, push gently some of the people who were not willing to embrace this transformation and ask them to look for other opportunities. So today, even if we make a third of our revenue from digital, I believe that with the shift of generation we have a lot more digital native than immigrants like me and secondly we have been able to attract and the new generation and the people who are interested into the digital world and I don't think that we have more than 10% of people who are reluctant and it was a... we used some tools and tricks to create some positive contamination which changed our DNA. In other words, it was positive and we have completely transformed ourselves. So some people will have been retrained, brainwashed, so to speak. Some others were digital native, all in all I think that we're in good shape. Okay, just one last quick question. What's the average age of the publicist workforce? 28, 28 years old only. Alright, let's move to Nikhil. That's a perfect segue because Nikhil is with Reliance from India, very fast growing and successful company. We know that in India there is a fantastic explosion of talented young people from a demographic point of view. How are you taking advantage of the demographic landscape in India and what sort of challenges does Reliance face or opportunities to capitalize on that the demographics of India present? Thanks. What I wanted to say on India is India is really enjoying a demographic dividend. You're very right in saying that. If you look at our country, we have 60% of the 1.2 billion people now below the age of 40 and our median will stay there until 2025. What is more important in perspective to this session is this is 45, 55 women and men. So it's nearly equal. It's biased towards one area. We churn out nearly 5 million graduates a year now. Please note that all of them speak English. Recently there was a survey done in India and they asked how many people can speak or understand English and you'll be very surprised that 40% of the population said that they do understand or speak English. And that gives India, I believe, with the youth of the manpower that we have to become a talent supplier virtually to the world because if you look at the western world nearly 25% of the talent in terms of the experience the western world will lose over the next from their active workforce in the next 7 to 8 years. So for countries like India that gives an enormous opportunity. For example, you've seen the service sector grow in India at a rapid pace and its growth rate is even higher than manufacturing. So that sector, if you ask them their average age of the workforce it'll be probably in their late 20s. For companies like us which are in manufacturing I'm very happy to say that our average age of our workforce is 33 years. So that shows the demographic dividend from the perspective of this session I think there were two other significant points. One was about the gender equality and the other one was about technology and I'll just briefly talk about both of these. If you look at the service sector particularly the banking sector in India if you look at the non-governmental banking sector 40% plus of the CEOs in banking are from our women. You look at biotechnology and you will see more than 25%. This is a result of education not only in India but what we call the haves of India wanting to have education outside of India. If you look at an average 20% of the urban workforce and 11% of the rural workforce is now women which is very high compared to the fact that 10 years ago both these numbers were below 5%. If you look at CSR as an activity or hospitality industry anywhere in the country this ratio will be between 45 and 55%. If you look at technology India has gone from 40 million telecom lines to 600 million telecom lines in a single decade and what that has done is in a recent time magazine survey you'll see that 79% of the Indians and 65% of the Indians respectively will answer you by SMS or email and therefore they have access to internet automatically so that is completely changing the way India works. Alright, so technology and the advancement of women in the senior leadership positions as well as the demographic dividend. Let me just mention to our audience our live audience that it's possible for you listening and viewing this event to Twitter questions or to email questions and just to give you the information by email you can send to hc at wef.ch in Switzerland on Twitter you can see number wefhc and weibo the same address so we'll take a look at some of these questions as they come through on the Twitter feed but let me just go from Nikhil to Christopher at the far end from Singapore and I think from a human capital point of view one thinks of Singapore as being a fantastic country in terms of acting as a magnet for talent from around the world and I think the mobility of professional and educated labour worldwide has really mushroomed in the last decade. Can you comment a little bit from a Singapore perspective on this? Yeah, thank you very much but I'm really in a catch-22 situation because I'm a Singaporean but I'm today sitting here representing a global trade union movement therefore my take would be what is the perspective of the trade union trade union movement towards this question of human capital development I think at the outset it is important for me to emphasise very clearly that we in the trade union movement recognise that continuous training development of human capital is essential not only to the individual to empower them in terms of job security and also wage security but certainly essential from a country point of view to make an economy sustainable and this is in this context that we welcome these emphasis on the development of human capital but there is a trend that we increasingly notice now and this is a base on the question of supply demand and link to the question of migration I think there are now many discussions about the movement of people within the WTO and even in the ASEAN for example and if we look at the context of the economic situation in Europe, United States and in the Asian region for example you will see a supply and demand situation especially among professionals and managerial staff in China for example I mean many studies have indicated that there is a desperate need for a lot of skill and trained people so there is a great demand at the same time the educational system and others are not equipped to provide the required numbers that are urgently needed and coincidentally now with the problem in Europe, United States we see now a surplus for example so this fits in very well with the discussions now about the movement of people and it is exactly in this context that we are concerned how this movement of people if it's allowed without proper regulation will cause what we call the race to the bottom where in the end the standard for professional and managerial staff not only in the region but also in other region will be correspondingly affected by this supply and demand situation therefore we think in discussing human capital we also must take into consideration the fact that it is more than just equipping a worker or professional with the skills and others it is also to ensure that it empowers them in term of the employability and most important I think in term of the capacity to earn and also to maintain a decent standard of living so I will... Do you feel that there is a significant brain drain still from emerging economies into the developed world or do you feel that the growth and trajectory of the world economy has it now working in the other direction? I think it's definitely on the reverse and this is the problem now imagine those people in the emerging economies and others having worked hard to try to achieve an educational standard and all of a sudden now they face competitions from others I think in Singapore for example this is one of the political sensitive the discussion that is taking place how to control the flow so as not to affect I think this is something that any would be able to talk about how we are trying to resolve this problem but suddenly it is an issue that has to be taken into consideration because if not it will only further aggravate what is already a very serious social divide situation nationally and globally Do you think looking at workers around the world do you feel that the competition among companies over the last 10 years has resulted in better investment in training and development for ordinary workers or do you feel that the competition has resulted in a more mercenary approach that reduces the investment in training and development? I'm speaking in the context of the fact that there are indeed good investment in human capital development what I'm pointing out is that this opportunity that arises now on the question of supply demand may cause some employers even some governments to be complacent and say why bother when I can easily import ready-made people who are able to work at work and this is the issue that I'm pointing out that we have to be conscious about it not to allow this complacency to set in and then to cause that problem which we are witnessing in many countries understood so let's now turn to Dennis Nally of PWC obviously overseeing a vast organization of professionals worldwide we've talked about technology we've talked about demographics we've talked about women we've talked about the balancing that Christopher referred to what are the key human capital issues that you and your people wrestle with at PWC? Thanks John and good afternoon everybody it's great to be here with you you know maybe just a couple of thoughts to set the stage in our global CEO survey that we released at Davos this past January so a survey that really tries to focus on the critical business issues that companies are facing what was interesting coming out of that survey is in the top three issues that CEOs talked about this past January the human capital agenda was one of the top three that's the first time that that issue has ever been elevated to that status in terms of issues, challenges that the CEOs were really focused on and so notwithstanding the challenge economic environment that we're dealing with all the issues that are on the plates of the CEO they're basically saying we don't have enough of the right people, qualified people to do the jobs that we're faced with today and so this is to me you know a critical business issue that many are really focused on and you're starting to see I think a number of organizations elevate the importance of dealing with this topic to effectively address it from a longer term standpoint and not surprising it's compensation and benefits packages it's the types of traditional areas that we're all familiar with about creating flexibility and allowing people to use technology and some of the more traditional ways to think about this issue at PWC our average age is about 28 and a half years old, 180,000 people around our network and so we embarked on this past year probably one of the most extensive studies of that population to really understand what's on their mind what is really, really important and how best do we as an institution begin to address these needs and I would give you the headline for us coming out of this survey is the deal is changing, the deal is changing and so what this group of individuals is looking for this next generation is looking for it's much more than just financial rewards you know, so you start with that, you go down the path of what does your institution stand for what is its purpose what is its contribution to society they want to join organizations that have a purpose that just aren't necessarily focused on the bottom line, the P&L, etc they want to have a lot more flexibility than any of us ever had when we were working up the career ladder, that's a very big important part of what they're looking for so they want an organization that will support those kinds of choices that they're really looking for, they want to be able to give back to the community that's a very important part of their role, their purpose because they think about what's important to them and lastly, they want to have their own personal life they don't want to be anchored down at a desk or a computer or whatever that historically has been the case and what's interesting about this study is that you would think well maybe there is some real distinctions between those that are in a market or a developing market I will tell you, no way this is the common themes that are really across this generation and so I think it's very interesting it's given us a lot to think about in terms of how we need to address many of these things, I describe it as this generation of workers wants to have it all and how do you figure all that out and create an environment that allows individuals to really prosper the way and develop the way they want to as individuals, which I think is a real challenge the last comment I would make is and for dialogues that we're having with many of our clients we think the human capital agenda is so important and so critical and so strategic that it needs to be owned by the CEO in other words historically this discussion never really was in the C-suite the way we think it needs to be today so it is as important as the whole issue of innovation new manufacturing facilities any other big strategic issue that's facing an organization if the CEO doesn't own that agenda and really drive it from a leadership standpoint it's pretty hard to see how you'll create the environment the culture that's really necessary to not only attract the real talent that you need to be competitive but also more importantly retain that talent. Dennis if I can just follow up on the generation why for a moment are there perhaps two or three particular best practices that you could share I'm sure many offices in the PWC network have come up with really creative ideas to attract or retain talent in that age range could you just share a couple with us two things John I would say the hardest thing for us in a professional services firm is creating an environment that really allows our people to have a lot of flexibility we're there to serve our clients we don't control the schedules we don't control deadlines we do create an environment that takes all of the issues I talked about and allows people to control their schedule as best they can really requires a different way to work is the best way to describe it and so the organization needs to understand that this is important it needs to think about how they team differently other members of the team need to step in when someone's got to go to a soccer game or whatever event that's on them so they're not there at a moment's notice it requires a different way to really work together and our most effective teams understand that they're all in it together this isn't one versus somebody else all in it together to create the kind of environment that is really necessary I'd say the other thing that we're doing which is a pilot which is very interesting again using technology this group is probably the most technologically advanced group we've ever seen you know I don't know if they were born with a computer but it certainly seems that way to me and so how they network how they communicate how they interact is you know very different than the way we collectively have so we have software that we're using within the organization that allows this group to collaborate in any part of the world on issues concerns building relationships etc that is designed to connect the organization through a form of social media is the best way I can describe it so I think it requires if you're going to create the right kind of open flexible environment it requires all of us to think very differently about you know how best to get that accomplished okay alright thanks thanks a lot Dennis so now we go to Annie who is a great friend of the forum I think many of you know Annie and long time expert academic from Singapore in the area of human capital and finance as well so Annie we've pulled it together a little bit for us what you've heard so far and perhaps a little bit more on the issue of women in the human capital pool would also be helpful thank you thank you very much John you know I was a little bit disappointed because when I was moderating the future of finance the room is packed but when we're having the future of human capital we see a lot of empty seats and it's filling up now but I want to tell you this is a very important topic and I think Dennis you mentioned it it should be owned not by CEO so long it should be owned by educators it should be owned by governments and it should be owned by private sector and I'm very convinced about that because it could be the strategic competitive advantage in many countries and people may not realize it but in Singapore we have no resources and human capital is the only piece of asset that we have and we are very challenged I think Christopher was going to tell you one of the biggest challenges right now is goods flow funds flow very easily but human capital can be blocked it cannot flow as easily and when it comes to difficult times people do get protectionist and it's in the area of human capital movements and one of our challenges not just Singapore but many of the countries that have transformed from manufacturing to service is that a lot of re-learning has to take place I think when you talk about have EQ, have IQ, have TQ you'll be fine, sorry you have all the cues and you can still lose a job and one of our challenges has been many of our young people we are against the trend we don't have that many young people but when you are 45 to about 60 you are finding it a struggle to be given a second chance and I think that was what Chris was trying to say increasingly you do have the other way around not the Gen Y but the baby boomers trying to find for themselves a new career pathway and we need multiple career pathways and I think when private equity start putting investments in education my biggest worry is they are just putting it in the form of degree programs and coming up with more IB or A level programs and more of the same but they should be investing in competency they should be in skills and our PMATS what we call the professional managers engineers need retraining and I get very excited when I saw some of the things that industry are doing with educationists to rebuild the skills and you should be given a chance to go back to school to relearn so that you have a different life cycle your different career pathway from your first degree program so you need not go back for another change but you are going back for something that is meaningful engaging and you could start all over again so I think the conversation in this forum should break the mold we shouldn't be talking about the different types of education we should be talking about collaboration we should be talking about cross border investments that can take human capital to the next level I know I should be stopping but John carried away you have to talk about women before you can relax if you don't talk about women you will never relax Nikhil was talking about women so I was giving him the credit get the women thing out of your system I need to get a women thing out of my system as John correctly pointed out because if you look at the data in any country women and men all go to school in the same ratio the capital in the other gender the women gender and I think when we come to addressing the gaps in gender health it gets covered quite well education it gets covered quite well but somehow in the business sector we don't get that many women in leadership positions and because of this implied discrepancy when we look for women on boards we don't find many women who are in leadership position who get selected to be on the boards of companies and everyone use a cop out they say let's not bring in the gender factor let's talk about diversity and I think we need to carry the bull on the horns and I really thought Malaysia was wonderful to set a quota I was resisting the whole quota concept for a long time and we keep saying there must be a diverse board but I think that's a cop out because people are saying diversity means to bring the older young the handicapped inclusiveness but they never want to address the gender gap and the gender gap has to be addressed because if you look at the web reports companies who have women on board somewhere somehow over the long term they do get very competitive and likewise with countries so I really think we should not we should start addressing the issue directly as well okay good so let me just ask you a question on the previous topic the issue of re-skilling and I just wonder what we see in developed economies is literally millions of people who are not able to be re-skilled do you agree with that or is it that we just haven't made enough effort or the right effort to help them find their way I think, I'm sorry John I have to disagree with you it was a question great re-skilling takes two hands it takes a government investment and so you might even have to tell the people who have already got first bite of the cherry that the government needs to come in and re-invest in competency based training and the world is changing so fast so I've got engineers who are now operating hospitals and they have to re-learn what healthcare is all about so they have the basic engineering skills but they need to re-learn the industry and the domain area and I think if hospitals are really in need of talented people then they have to co-invest so the co-investment model is what I'm looking for you asked earlier if there is enough training on companies yes, companies send a lot of people to executive education which I looked after for the last 12 years I've now set up a center for professional studies because while it's great to have two week, three weeks program on soft skills, team building managing complexity cross-border, cross-cultural you still need a peeler of knowledge you need deep knowledge and I think to invest in that we need collaboration between government and private sector and universities have to change university have to realize that it's not called a trade school when you build competencies and skills, it's a lot of learning and you need not tell yourself that this is not rigorous so you could tell I'm a very different academy I feel very strongly that universities should not sit on their high horses and say that this is trade and we should not get involved there's a room for everybody and for public, private and academic partnership this point about this isn't just about governments or business I mean to me you also have to involve the individual in this process as well because I really do think the model has fundamentally changed I think the notion of acquiring a skill or a profession or the way we used to think about this in the past those days are long gone so the individual also then has to take responsibility for his or her own self development that's got to be as important a part of this issue as anything and I think sometimes that's often missing what are the skills that you think you're going to need five, eight years down the road here and if you're not thinking about that together with either your company or your governments or the educational institutions we've got a real void here because this world is just going to get faster and faster and faster and therefore the likelihood of being able to just step back and say aha I've got this skill and it's going to be always relevant I think people are going to wake up one morning and find out they're pretty obsolete so I think it's a total picture of how we need to think about this skills question alright I think we've had a great set of introductory comments put a lot of issues on the table before going to the audience I want to acknowledge Anne Hel Cabrera who is the rapporteur for the session who is formerly the head of the Thunderbird Business School in America and now president of George Mason University outside of Washington now we're going to go to some questions so you know I have a very old fashioned definition of a question which is a single sentence that ends with a question mark so you know I don't want to call on someone unless they can discipline themselves to that standard so don't put your hand up until you've really framed the question in that way a single sentence ending with a question mark no it can't be a long question only three points of punctuation during the sentence we're going to go to the gentleman at the back don't let me down okay don't let me down tell us who you are who you'd like to address the question to okay my name is Mahmoud Nalchik from Morayan Group Saudi Arabia I'm just addressing it to whoever thinks you know he's better to answer that question which is we face in Saudi Arabia is the mismatch between the skills that the private sector which supposed to be the biggest employer and the what has been produced by the educational system mainly the vocational training and I was surprised to know some of the countries including the US that this mismatch is even exist there in some of the advanced countries like European countries where the unemployment is high but of the problem caused because of the mismatch between the skills required so my question to you is this the responsibility of the government the educational system whether it's universities or vocational training or the private sectors or all of the above it's a great question is the government through the vocational and skills training sector really supplying what is needed for economic development now I'll give Annie a chance in a moment but who else would like to have a go on this one okay Johnny I believe that as the world is moving faster and faster we have to be prepared to give the young students not only the first education the first training the first element of background an ability to learn and relearn over time if the education that is provided by the government to the young kids is too narrow it will be very difficult for them to adapt every 10 years to a new job so from my perspective I don't think it is the responsibility of the government to train and educate the young generation for nothing else but a very broad an ability to learn not a special learning not a special focus but being capable of relearning reshaping themselves over and over again and if they have those kind of skills this ability to reinvent themselves then they will be in a much better position every 10 years to learn a new job to enter into new technologies new opportunities rather than being just trained as on a specific job and I think that there are different roles different kind of responsibilities to the government to the educational system to provide the basics the foundations and to the industry to the private sectors to provide them with good and specific training for a specific job all right is there in your opinion recruiting around the world is there any higher education system in the world that you would single out and say that country is doing a good job of doing what you just suggested be done very difficult because you can find good stuff from all over the world right can we take someone else I have to be a Singaporean in this instance because the fact is that in Singapore the educational system is as described the government provides a very broad base to prepare the students for education per se and I think the private sector kicking to go into the specific I think one of the most outstanding program is the program that is now I think they call project advantage is educational program directed at those who are on the on the bring of retirement to retrain them with new skill so that they are able to continue the work in a different capacity I thought it's a very innovative program because for many retirees who want to scale down but unable to continue with the job with the same level income so I thought so it should be a combination of the private sector I just want to reinforce the gist of what the questioner was asking because I think in most in most higher education regimes in the world you have an entrenched outdated unchallenged group of academics running things the way they've always run them and not really being forced by either the private sector the electorate or their governments to step up to the plate clean house and change and embrace new technology so I'm very sympathetic with the gist of what the gentleman asked and I think that we in the university sector have a much greater burden of responsibility in this regard than perhaps anyone else but competition will change the profile and the landscape so I think universities are changing so I want to do justice to some of it it's just that you cannot you should not invest or private equity funds should not invest in universities and more of the same and just do a paper chase so in the Middle East there are emerging private universities that are challenging the outmoded state universities to bring in new youngsters and train them perhaps better for the 21st century that they're confronting so thank you sir for the question let's have another one from the audience please the lady in the center thank you my name is Silvana Koch-Merin a member of the European Parliament in Brussels and I'd like to get back to the woman thing as you called it last week Monday the EU started the legislative procedure for introducing a quota on supervisory boards of big stock exchange listed companies in Europe which means that 40% of the board have to be of the now underrepresented gender meaning women it's include sanctions if you don't meet that criteria and I would just like to know maybe of the present gentleman what your opinion on legislation like this is thank you well let's take the reliance and the public sees how many women on your board Nikhil none none he said it very quietly did you hear that none but I would like to say something on the subject I think that this legislation is meaningful when the GDP reaches a certain level and it will be and when you have a certain level of minimum income for countries developing countries like India it's very different because there are pockets of excellence as I explained to you whether it's service industries or IT or in hospitality or even in as I said CSR objectives of all manufacturing companies but as we evolve to grow from 1.3 trillion dollar economy towards a 5 trillion mark you will see that this transition will happen much faster just like in technology you saw that India adopted 2G after 20 years it was discovered in the world but 4G is being launched within the same year and I think the same transition will happen public sees board how many women I think that this panel was very well built because we are probably on the other side we have the largest representation of women of all listed companies in Europe 7 out of 15 and this is probably the reason why we are outperforming in our industry and Dennis just one comment I wanted to make and this is the broader question of quotas which I have been incredibly frustrated in terms of the lack of progress around the world on the whole gender question and it just amazes me when we think about the demographics that we don't have better results and quite frankly this is a topic that we have been debating and discussing for years and years and years and so I do think the question of quotas is a very interesting one and the way I thought about that issue is I think you have to be very careful about where you impose quotas and the reason I say that is you have to be sure that if you are trying to drive that kind of change that the quota that you are imposing will allow the individuals that are going to be a part of that change to be successful all too often what I mean by that is all too often if you impose a quota and the individuals that are then in the spotlight in a particular role or function if they don't have the right experience or the skills to be successful they are going to fail and I think you do that whole agenda a disservice as contrast to moving that agenda in a very positive way now when it comes to the board from a governance standpoint I for one believe there are more than enough adequate females that should be on boards and therefore the quota system would in fact or should in fact help drive the kind of change you are talking about if on the other hand you start talking about I am going to impose quotas around CEOs or something else like that then I think you run the risk of really hurting the whole process from a longer term standpoint so just a quick observation so if I can just be permitted an editorial comment I am on the public record for at least a year supporting quotas for women on boards in the developed world and let me tell you the reason for it and the reason for it is that when you don't have I first of all agree with that the bench strength of talent is more than sufficient to provide candidates for boards who are women but what happens on a board and I have been on 12 of these publicly listed company boards is that the men on the board will say what we want is we want a CEO or an ex-CEO as the non-executive director and that just reinforces the status quo because there are no or not sufficient CEOs or ex-CEOs who are women so this is the way in which men continue to fix this issue in terms of boards they set the board criteria for non-executive directors to require a CEO level experience and I am absolutely convinced that that will go on unless these public, unless these quotas are legislated and I am sure that if they're legislated 10 years from now people will look back and they will not believe what they were arguing over because the talent strength, the bench strength is very, very substantial in all of these developed economies at this stage. Okay, let's go for another question if we may. Do we have a couple more hands in the audience? Who would like to ask one? Maybe the gentleman in the front row and then we'll go to you with the orange tie in a moment. Please, in the front row. Thank you. My name is Liu Kaiming and I am a CEO based on the and we dedicate to do labour and work education and actually last two years I also do some investigation on the human capital and the needs of work management. Yeah, actually now many people think about the human capital of the worker but actually who invests but today we talk many people, this human capital development is about college college aid but very few people to see many most worker actually they are very low education it's less than nine year education so it's and when second is vocation education but most we say the industry engineer have a development so faster so most worker they only can do very simple they don't need to have expertise so they actually most worker cannot learn too much on their vocation so and then as I think the third capital is more important it's about the social capital their social skill confide as a mentorship in society but no people to do that but in China we can see although there are so many people special migrant worker in the factory but no people to think how to invest these people including government and the company I think this is more important I won't ask all of you how to find a solution special in China it's very important because I think in China the worker is the most important manpower to try China economic development but now we can talk many people talk how to upgrade the technology how to shift the supply chain to Vietnam Cambodia but we say sorry we say the capital can move but the people cannot move especially the worker when China we say from $1,000 now it's $5,000 but other worker the facility is so low because the human capital cannot develop let's focus our thinking for a moment on the bottom of the pyramid okay from the human capital point of view and I think the questioner asks this very tough and challenging question in fast-paced very rapid change world how can people who are maybe not that smart on IQ EQ and TQ and with all the investment that could be poured into each of them perhaps not going to be do that much more if I got the questioners just right how can we still invest in a way that will improve the quality of life and the social contribution and satisfaction of these people at the bottom of the pyramid I go to Nikhil first I will share the India experience because it's pretty similar in India a few years ago we had a law that was called in Hindi what it means is right to education for all and this was directed at primary education and what it does is there is not enough teachers for every school in India but it allows the use of technology to broadcast and transmit those lessons electronically as a result of which every school has a good quality of education virtually and what that did is if you look at now the Ivy League schools in the United States you will be surprised that the students are not admitted from Bombay Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore or Hyderabad which are our major or Calcutta which are our major cities but they also find from the second tier cities and that shows that this effort is succeeding if you look at the rate of dropouts the school this is reduced by 14% and that is a measure again of doing this if you look at vocational guidance what has happened and let me again say differently not only the government schools are doing vocational training but there are several private companies that are doing specific vocational training so that they can provide livelihood for example we at Reliance do this for our welders and our fitters and so on and so forth and I can relate to a previous question that was asked that one day I was in Saudi Arabia and I just made an advertisement of all the ex reliance people who would like to gather I will be surprised that we got more than 25,000 applications well let me ask Christopher if he has a view on the question as well from a union point of view I think it is important for us to also recognize the accumulation of experience on the job itself is also part of an improvement in human capital development because we have always been discussing that someone must go attend a course, get a certificate and then you are better off but with accumulated experience that itself is capital human development Christopher I agree with you and I like the question in Singapore the two types of jobs that one wants to do is to clean up the place after you have eaten and the other kind of job is security guards but in Singapore you see so many condominiums, so many malls so you have to up the standards of security guards so certification was that process and people feel proud because if I am a security guard I do get prior training and I get certified and therefore I can contribute and the productivity goes up I get higher pay so you don't want your worker to continue to be at the bottom of the pyramid competing because they are cheap you want your worker to have higher productivity so that you could pay them higher and then even if they lose the jobs which they cannot compete it is fine because it is part of the transformation so I think the investment in those lifelong learning comes from both private sector public sector and anybody else with a conviction including from NGO or foundations I just give you perhaps one small example from CEIBS we have ten full time drivers on our staff after I arrived I went to see these drivers in their smoking room buried in the basement of the university I said to them you are our number one sales organization when you go and pick someone up from Pudong airport you are the first contact that they have with CEIBS so you are our most important employees and then in addition we give them a special bonus if they take and pass CPR training we give them more money for their own uniform so that they can be smart and well dressed if they learn English and pass a little English test they get an extra monthly bonus so it doesn't matter what level of the organization you are everybody want to be respected for their potential to do better and so I think we all can relate to that and in our own creative ways at whatever level we are dealing with in the organization we can find ideas that will help improve motivation and self-respect all right we have time for one more question if there is one last brief question oh the orange tie gentlemen yeah sorry a brief question if it's all possible thank you thank you very much I also have a question about from a little bit of different perspective I'm a professor of Seoul National University and for the past several years I find a very interesting trend there is an increasing number of female students in the best universities and the best departments and this is not only about the numbers but it is also that these female students excel the male students and it is very difficult to find very good male students these days they kind of have a quota for the male students and this happens not only in my university but also in the foreign ministry they also have an informal quota for the male diplomats and we have a lot of female students doing very well in the bar exams so the female students and the women are doing extremely well in these days particularly for the young generations do you find similar trends in your country and also do you have any guess why this happens in a country like South Korea do you have any implications for the human resources for the future okay let me ask Dennis because you're recruiting thousands of people worldwide each year how do you see gender playing out in terms of the talent pool that you're recruiting from I would say the way you just described it in Korea is identical to how we see it in a number of markets you know here in China for example what the percentage of women earnest is what 60 60% versus 40 a female versus male in the United States I think it's 54% female versus male and so you step back and say in our business you know women typically you know are further advanced developed and some of their thinking particularly around math skills reasoning skills, analytical skills and more importantly what we're seeing today is women when I talked about creating a different type of work environment women historically are much more collaborative and get along well better with people and are more apt to contribute as contracted to men that are much more singularly focused do it my way and therefore in a teaming environment our women are doing much better than even some of our men so I think it's a trend I think it's something we're all going to have to collectively deal with and but I think it's here to stay so in the next 10 years we may not need this conversation Dennis I think that's what Dennis is saying one last comment from Johnny to be here to discuss how we're going to introduce some quota for men in some professions but let's wait the next 10 years okay I think when we get to this point in the discussion it's definitely time to call a halt since we're obviously getting a little punch drunk so why don't we thank our panelists they've done a very good job for us thank you thanks to all of you for coming in for questions from the floor thank you