 Good afternoon. I'd like to warmly welcome the online audience to the session on New vision for job creation part of the World Economic Forum's jobs reset summit I'm Jennifer Shanker editor-in-chief of the innovator a global publication about digital transformation We learned this morning with the release of the forum's job report that Automation is proceeding at a pace even faster than anticipated and that unemployment in developed economies is projected to rise from 5.4% at the start of this year to 12.6% by the end of the year Even as there continues to be growth in the so-called jobs of the future We are going to be discussing what can be done Urgently to invest in future job creation and Support transitions to the jobs of the future We have four experts on our panel. We have Nicholas Marcecal chief executive officer of Gruppo Magnus Michael Pritos chief executive officer of Fathom in Australia and Hamun Actiari CEO of future fit AI in Canada I'd like to kick off our discussion with you Nicholas. How is your company dealing with workers during the pandemic? Yeah, thank you, Jennifer and thank you all Very glad to be here with you and share some of our insights in what we've done and the situation we faced in Latin America, we face very dire situation with unemployment, which was even above 8% last year and growing and also with a Very slow economy. So the situation is also more tense There's lack of inclusiveness lack of growth underutilization Decreasing work out quality a growing formal economy and inequalities in in access to work and work that quality and income inequality So with all these situations in in our part of our sale as we participate in the economy as a company We we set out a plan to see how can we work? This out so instead of backing out and cutting jobs Jennifer What we've really done is look follow the workforce principles many of them from from the web Which relates the first part of this planning we set up a 2025 plan and we started this in the month of August One could say how can you be planning when you cannot know what's going to happen next week or even tomorrow? However, we have to reshape that plan a couple of times and we saw great opportunities Not only in our Mexico market, but also in the US and also in Latin America So we set out a time to see how can we grow our business in different markets and grow our business in different parts of the value chain We're developers of infrastructure and real estate and we saw opportunities not only for participating with our suppliers Which we were very hard hit with the situation jobs were closed for two months So we set out a plan also with civil society and other non-for-profits to help us The most needed construction workers, so we provide the support In terms of a short term support for their basic needs that that was an entering Effect and what we saw is we needed to create jobs by also creating more more Works and more projects so we touched also with the government and provided some alternatives of new schemes of new projects So we pushed on the public-private partnerships and the government in particular in Mexico Launched a new infrastructure a program. So that helped in the macro sense To also have more projects. The other thing we Worked a lot Jennifer and communication and these are very tough times Psychologically because some people have lost their jobs Even if they remain with their jobs in Mernos, their partners or spouses might have lost their jobs So we provided some support and also some programs with a foundation called foundation paraguay, which provides also some schemes of Other family members who could develop some interim type of jobs. So that also helped We focused a lot on the employment experience How are they dealing with working from home and also some of our colleagues which work in Work centers namely hospitals and two of our hospitals have been devoted to COVID So it was also a very tough situation. So we've also been very much in touch with them also in toll roads They deal a lot with the with the public and we've been able to maintain many of those those toll road road jobs We've done some Automation in the toll collection, but we've been dealing with having both parts also maintaining some of the toll road operators So we've designed our work both Still having those jobs for the communities in the toll roads Which are low income and also providing some technology. So we've been able to balance Jennifer some part of the short term concerns and the longer term concerns Creating new jobs. We started new ventures. For instance in our hospitals Hospital hospital information systems. So we have developed that part But also we provide some other types of services which require more jobs namely Amines the part of the the the restaurants and also food for the For for the patients and also some maintenance work So we've been able to maintain some more of the traditional jobs and some more of the high tech jobs That's part of what we've been doing with this handling the pandemic Jennifer Thank you so much for that comprehensive view of How you are handling both short term like emergency measures with long-term planning and how you're working with the government I think that's a perfect Such way to our next speaker. I'd like to introduce Carlos Alexandre da Costa deputy minister for productivity employment and competitiveness in Brazil's ministry of economy and Co-chair of closing the skills gap accelerator a program launched in Davos 2020 under the forums Shaping the future of the new economy and society platform Welcome deputy minister um a Just released world economic forum if so survey of more than 12,000 working adults in 27 countries Found that more than half are concerned about losing their jobs in the next 12 months, but Currently only 21 percent of businesses Report being able to make use of public funds to support their employees through the transition process According to the forums jobs report, which was released this morning What in your view? should government be doing to Ensure that workers remain employable during these difficult economic times and what areas In your opinion need investment in order to create jobs Jennifer, uh, thank you very much for a question. Thank you very much for For conducting this this meeting Let me just give you a little bit a glimpse of what we have done during the pandemic because right now Brazil is recovering very fast For instance, our industrial production in Brazil Accumulated from January to September is already has already reached the same level of the last of the same period last year And in the ad we are growing two digits in comparison to the same month of last year We are already growing But there were two things that we have done during the pandemic which have worked really well First we have created an emergency benefit Which is equivalent to an employment insurance for those companies that decided to Suspend their job program that the the the job of their workers So instead of the government paying employment insurance The government would keep their employees and government would pay up to the ceiling of the unemployment insurance Right now 15 million Brazilians are under this program And which ends right now this month and there is the commitment of the company To keep these jobs for the same period of time that the the employees received the insurance during this time So this has helped companies to maintain their workers And in such a way the recovery process is much faster because they don't need to Hire and retrain and induce the employees to do to these companies The second thing is a huge credit program, especially for small and medium-sized businesses It's the largest program we've ever ever had here in brazil right now We are already reaching 25 billion dollars which have been conceded to companies in three months In credit that will be repaid during three years Uh, and this is in including companies in the financial markets 60 of these companies This is very focused in small companies had never got credit for any kind of financial institution before And right now they are building their credit history. So this is also an institutional advance for our economy So with money to recover the production with the employees cap, we are resuming growth really fast right now And this is the this has been built with the whole private sector, but some problems We already faced before unemployment was High even though it was decreasing it was high before and it was high and it still is high We have uh 12 million unemployed people in brazil we used to have 10 in the beginning of the pandemic now We have 12 and it is high for two main reasons First of all the cost of hiring people in brazil is too high And we know that this it is high also in other developing economies The payroll taxes are high Uh, the the all the bureaucracy of hiring people is stringent And we are working to reduce that in the tax reform that we are implementing right now We need to reduce the cost of hiring people in brazil and also in other economies for the companies Companies need to hire easily their employees. So we are working we are finalizing a package right now to propose to the congress But we are also working with job matching and job skills And then the job skills we are working the world with the world economic forum the job skills accelerator in order to implement a huge program of Skilling people here in brazil and we are working mainly with private sources of funding And and why is that first of all here in brazil? We have the system. I ask a system which has Received some compulsory resources from companies Equivalent to two percent of the payroll We are planning to reduce that but redirect all these resources to a huge job skills Program in the whole country more than eight million people will be trained in $300 program in the next two years here in brazil in different levels with these resources We and this is going to be made with results orientation We're going to do this comparing test groups and control groups To make sure that the employability of those people is much higher than those that do not go through this training program So accountability of these programs is very important in the past We have spent billions of dollars in programs that did not work We need to make sure that the results are going to be obtained And and also in private programs from companies for instance microsoft has just donated yesterday We announced this yesterday five point five million courses Five point five million courses for brazilians free Enough from computer literacy up until artificial intelligence It's in various levels. We are working very closely to companies here to bridge the skills gap It's not a government problem. It's a society problem It's a problem of stakeholder capitalism as the world development development for World economic formalization It's a problem that the whole society needs to get together because government is limited in terms of resources and knowledge about what needs to be done So the private sector needs to work with us several other companies are also donating skills programs to to to this boost that we we are planning and finally We are revised. We have a job matching service here in brazil government service here in brazil Which is really outdated and we managed to have donations from the private sector and right now Microsoft has also donated a transition to a new system with profiling of all of everybody We have 25 million people in this system right now also certification of skills of these people And using artificial intelligence to match the demand and the supply of jobs Right now the we have two great problems in brazil The turnover which is really high last year We have had a growth in employment of one million people But 15 million people have been fired And 16 million people have been hired So this this increases a lot of frictional employment The faster we can make to reduce the period of time people get are in employment to find a job And the more we increase the tenure of people in their jobs by scaling those people We are going to solve the unemployment problem and this will be done is being done right now really fast We are advancing and we are working with the private sector. I think this is key for us stakeholder capitalism in practice and we are really happy to work with the world economic forum in the skills accelerator program Okay, thank you so much deputy minister. I think this is a great transition to our two panelists Michael and hamoon who both run Startup companies that use technologies that are helping people to transition And fit into into what you were just discussing I think both of them argue that we need new approaches and online courses are great They're an important part of the mix, but um more needs to be done to um map The skills that people already have to the new jobs of the future. So maybe Hamoon you can start then michael uh to to to talk about that question Sure. Thank you, jennifer and a pleasure to be here Perhaps just a few highlights of how we're seeing companies and governments take action around this and we've got some Great examples of that on the on the panel here. I think what covet has done in in its Acceleration of the impacts both on people and on jobs Is really pulled that pulled back the curtain on how ready a given company a given government a given region is For needing to go through fast and rapid transitions. Um, the forum also released the Jobs report that today and what it speaks to is what the deputy minister also spoke to Which is new job creation and yet job destruction And so I think the the two elements that are critical in solving for this is one Where do the new jobs come from? And I think one of the things we're seeing significantly is yes, of course There are the sexy tech jobs But there is a group of what we see in the data And describe as the hidden good jobs that often don't nearly get the level of attention They need and deserve but they are from a new job creation perspective significantly Larger pools of opportunities and much more accessible to a larger pool of individuals To to be able to get to so those are opportunities in health care in education In in the likes of for example, even in technology, not just becoming a data scientist But becoming a sales for sales for administrative, for example So I think we've just on the job creation side on the destination of where people are going We've got to expand the set of the possible from only the very very high tech jobs that end up in headlines of reports And then the second thing is we see companies Look at what has happened and realize for years They've talked about reimagining recruiting reimagining learning and development But not having at all touched what has been in the headlines every day around layoffs And so increasingly a shift from we will that's too taboo and we're not going to touch it And we're not going to talk about it to The reality of our new world our significant workforce transition and as nicola spoke to this How can we get creative through a multilever approach of what we think of as integrated rescaling and outscaling? So it's not about protecting a single job because we can't predetermine that but it is about protecting people And helping them land softly wherever they go next Similarly on the government side realizing employment services and the deputy minister And the work his team has led is is really leading example around this of not only saying look This system is not good enough for the new reality of the world But also saying for us to solve this We need to make our data widely accessible and and the deputy minister has an He didn't have a chance to speak to it today But open up apis to data sources to say come come to this data and help us solve for what those transition pathways look like The final thing perhaps i'll i'll finish with is the double-edged sword of ai, right? so Unfortunately most of the discussion ends up being the techno optimist talking about ai will solve the future Let it deal with it and the other side saying ai is going to destroy everything The reality is it can be used on both sides So we can and we see this in working with both companies like royal bank of canada as well as with governments in in europe north america and east asia Is ai can then be used if targeted effectively to think of an ai powered gps for your career So locate where you're starting from in terms of skills and interests Map destinations of where you could go where the sources of new job creation are and then connect you to the learning training Coaching support health and wellness supports you need to make that transition Thank you so much. I'm in michael. I'd like to turn to you Now i'm in in the past when you and i have talked, you know, what what happens quite often is uh And companies look at this and and and uh kind of black and white way and and they they say well You know, we we need to cut people in our accounting department But then we need to go out and find these cyber security experts When in fact, maybe some of the people in the accounting have the skills Uh, the basic skill sets to become cyber security experts if they had a bit of training so how do we how do we sort of make sure that uh companies are not just thinking about laying off people in the old roles but Leverage the skills of the people they already have and help to transition them into new roles And secondly, I'd love for you to talk about how your company's technology You know, basically anticipates how different things like COVID and AI and robotics will will impact Job jobs going forward and maybe give us a glimpse of what you see As the as the road ahead in terms of job creation Great. Well, thank you Jennifer and thank you everybody for the opportunity to take part Um two big questions. I might do the second one first Um, maybe before we get into where the job job to be created. Let's just level set on where we all are So fathoms working with companies and governments in 26 countries on these issues at the moment um, and until january There was an evolving but I think quite Increasingly widespread for you that the future of work is not the end of jobs It's a rapid outscale transition And that's really coming to the piece that you said they're about how accountants become cyber analysts We'll get to that in a second COVID has obviously had a huge impact in terms of how Um companies and governments around the world are tackling this and I think really in three main main forms Firstly, the rush to remote working now This is creating opportunities for companies to deploy technologies to enable remote working But obviously also creating productivity issues But increasingly around the world we're seeing companies bring people back to the office And this is then changing the nature of real estate It's meaning that companies are going about workplace redesign And it means that the way that teams now have been considered is actually different And we've seen a real acceleration In some of the trends the companies have been thinking about over the last few years as they redesign the workplace around the new workforce Secondly the COVID driven recession has led to increasingly often what was seen described as case shaped recoveries Where the future the the outcome of that recession is not the same for every industry So the conventional thinking at the beginning and we heard politicians all over the world say there would be a v-shaped recovery We would go in hard. We'd share jobs. There'd be productivity problems and then we'd come out And that's not actually what we're seeing What we're seeing is that most companies most industries went down Some are staying down and some are coming up depending on the industry and the economy that they're in Technology, health care, pharmaceuticals, professional services A lot of those industries are in ascendance even during the recession They're busy because of the recession Other other industries retail particularly are staying down and probably going to stay down for a while What this means is that when we then think about the recessionary effect in different economies We now got to look at fiscal policy and economic policy in each economy Again, the way that different countries tackle jobs and the way they've tackled stimulus measures has created very different effects in the u.s The first round of stimulus went to the individual worker and this led to a massive drop in the number of jobs In the uk stimulus was applied to companies and this allowed companies to retain workers So we've seen very different effects and unfortunately what that means is a complicating factor If we look at telecoms worldwide in january, you'd have said that telco's worldwide had very similar needs and issues But today for rise in british telecom telephonica and cintel Because of a combination of different recessionary effects in those countries and different economic policies now need different types of of solutions The key message here is that no longer one size fits all We need to really understand what the specific needs of different industries and different economies are and as hamming says That requires good data The third effect that we're seeing is what we're describing as a slingshot So covet 19 has been a slingshot in technology terms to 2023 to 2025 perhaps We think companies deploy things like robotic process automation at a level of scale But no one would have imagined 12 months ago most large companies around the world were experimenting with these technologies Are in now in full deployment And that although it's having an automating effect is also creating new opportunities and now to the second part of your question this transition When we model the effect of these emerging technologies And we model the effect in different industries of the recession And we model what the the exit from that recession looks like we're able to identify the supply and demand for future jobs This means that if we're able to then pinpoint where people are today And where they will be or could be tomorrow we can identify the skills gap We call this the job corridor And the job corridor allows us to identify what skills people need to affect that transition To illustrate this with the example that you kindly gifted me at the in the question accountants and cyber We know that we'll need many many fewer accountants in the future Because things like robotic process automation would take care of a lot of the work that accountants do today We also know there's a global cyber security talent shortage. We know why that is. I don't need to explain it It doesn't make any kind of sense for companies to be shedding accountants And paying all that money to exit those people from the organization and at the same time hiring cyber analysts From an ever smaller pile When it's actually possible to train those accountants to become the cyber analysts Much of the skills of one job assigned to the other the gap is cyber knowledge and that's a trainable gap So increasingly we're seeing companies use the fadden platform to identify What that transfer looks like that that transition that job corridor and to affect it and now not just at the Company level but increasingly often at the national level Super. Thank you so much