"Boosting employability in a post-COVID-19 world", by Isabelle Rouhan (EDHEC Master 1997)

Isabelle Rouhan (EDHEC Master 1997), Founder and President of Colibri Talent, lecturer and author of Les Métiers du futur (Éditions First, 2019), has recently published an article on the EDHEC Alumni official group on LinkedIn to share her vision of employability after the lockdown.

"According to a Eurostat study published in 2018, 15 million jobs were expected to be created in Europe by 2025 as part of the digital transformation, while 6 million unskilled jobs were at risk of disappearing for the same reason. So overall the scales were due to tip more than favourably. But the COVID-19 crisis has dealt us a new hand. At least, that’s the opinion of 67% of those in employment asked about their views at the beginning of April 2020 by AssessFirst. [1]

“Has the situation we are currently facing caused you to reflect in certain ways? Has your perspective on work or anything else changed in one way or another?”

The freeze on recruitment is now a reality and will have a long-term impact on jobs. [2] The challenge is now focused on supporting everyone to prepare for a return to normality. It is possible to turn this crisis into an opportunity to adapt our jobs and skillsets to the future, both in terms of promoting soft skills (adaptability, agility, capacity to work remotely) and training opportunities to acquire the skills of the future, which we can expect to be more demanding and more volatile.

The world in the aftermath of all this will be different. The global health crisis, combined with a recession the likes of which we have not seen for a century, raises many challenges for society in terms of recovery policies and jobs, but also solidarity and regional planning. In response to the Cassandras who seize every opportunity to predict mass unemployment and irrevocable social divides, the aim of this article is to inspire positive professional changes in a way that favours employability, with a view to making the post-lockdown period an opportunity to build a more inclusive and more sustainable economy 3.0.

It will focus on identifying the structural ways in which the current health crisis will impact upon transformations already underway in the workplace and in the skillsets needed today. Humans are resilient and so together we will have to make the post-crisis world one in which these changes will be opportunities for transformation on a grand scale, with the different professions open to the largest possible number.

A new playing field that will make for ambitious recruitment in US tech firms.

The economy will of course be severely impacted by this crisis. But some will emerge as winners, in particular tech firms and all those who have managed to shift upstream with their online sales. In March 2020 the Financial Times reported that tech firms in California had kept 15,900 positions open to recruitment despite the crisis, with a view to taking advantage of the shift towards an even more digital economy. Amazon has also opened up 100,000 jobs to recruitment globally, mainly in its warehouses to meet rising demand. [3] This gain in market share for e-commerce is unfortunately achieved to the detriment of small and medium-sized retailers who have been slow to keep up with the digital transformation.

Let’s not forget that this is not the first time that the crisis has favoured the adoption of new technologies. In a 2018 article cited in the Harvard Business Review in January 2020, Brad Hershbein and Lisa B. Kahn [4] combined more than 100 million job offers posted online between 2007 and 2015 with economic data to see how the financial crisis had affected the skills sought by employers. They found that the American cities most affected by the recession saw an increase in demand for high-level skills, particularly in IT. This rise in demand was partly because employers were able to benefit from the spike in unemployment and be more selective. This study also demonstrated that the demand for technological skills returned to normal once the job market improved.

A Europe-wide continuity plan

The key factor to recovering after a crisis is preparation. According to a study conducted by BAIN after the 2008 crisis, among those companies who stagnated, “few had devised an emergency plan or reflected on other scenarios. When the crisis struck, they switched to survival mode, making severe cuts and reacting defensively.” Most companies who struggle their way through a recession recover more slowly and never really make up for their losses.

The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to formalise, test and then apply continuity plans, whether on the individual scale of a business or that of European States who have developed a concerted response and helped each other out with patient care.

Relocations and the rise of future industry in France

French industry has just increased fivefold its capacity to produce masks in only a few weeks. And European governments are now talking about repatriating the most strategic aspects of production, starting with medication. The competitiveness of labour is clearly a topical issue and one that can also be seen as an opportunity to rebuild a new industrial apparatus that is ultra-automated, high-performance and competitive.

It should be pointed out that automation rates and access to the job market are not directly correlated. The world’s two most automated countries are Japan and Germany, and their unemployment rates are among the lowest globally at around 3%. Nonetheless, according to the state secretary at the French ministry of the economy and finance, Agnès Pannier-Runacher [5], France has only 19 robots for every 1000 employees. There is therefore significant room for improvement compared to countries like Italy (20:1000), Germany (34:1000) and South Korea (77:1000).

Building new ultra-modern factories in Europe will make us more competitive at the highest level and help re-establish the network of industrial jobs that has gradually disappeared across the continent.

"Never send a human to do a machine's job", Agent Smith, Matrix

Facilitating universal access to the job market with teleworking

Half of the planet is in lockdown, and much of it has switched to teleworking. Some of us were already used to this, with sufficient training and equipment to work from home. But not everyone: before the crisis many companies in the tertiary sector refused out of principle to allow their staff work from home due to a lack of trust. Now it has become mandatory and these companies are realising that teleworking is efficient and is a real form of work. This opens up prospects to facilitate access to the job market from the home for the disabled or those with good Internet connections but located far from centres of employment.

Although it may not be a solution for everyone, notably the 13 million people in France who are cut off digitally [6], teleworking can be a driver to facilitate access to the workplace across regions and for those who find it difficult to travel.

Even an orchestra, whose raison d’être is to play together and in public, can now work from home, as Orchestre National de France showed last week when they played Ravel’s Boléro in lockdown.

Remote and continuous training

The lockdown has given us time to read, study and undergo training. The market for e-learning saw a 20% jump in March 2020. Thousands of schools switched to remote learning in just a few days and the classes are of a high quality. To conclude this article, I would like to share with you my favourite links to find out more about artificial intelligence, particularly via OpenClassrooms:

Beginner's level

Advanced level

My next article will address leadership in times of crisis. By way of introduction, for more about behavioural skills, I recommend the CNAM’s MOOC by Cécile DEJOUX: “Du manager au leader : devenir agile et collaboratif”.

Stay healthy."

More about Colibri Talent : www.colibri-talent.com.

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Notes :

[1] AssessFirst survey conducted in March 2020 involving 1,000 respondents. Question put to respondents: “Has the situation we are currently facing caused you to reflect in certain ways? Has your perspective on work or anything else changed in one way or another?”

[2] Source: SYNTEC Conseil, April 2020

[3] Source: Forbes, 19 March 2020

[4] Respectively: Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and University of Rochester

[5] SYNTEC event, 14 January 2020

[6] These are people who have no Internet connection (white zone) or lack the skills to upload or download an email attachment.