The workforce for implementing Vision 2041 agenda

The government has digitalised different services, multimedia classrooms have been introduced and broadband Internet connections have been taken to every nook and cranny of the country. These are the giant steps towards making the Vision 2021 a reality by achieving the goal of ending poverty, inequality and human deprivation.
The government initiatives towards making the Vision 2021 a success can be divided into three major areas: 1. Digitisation in all walks of life, i.e. digitising government services, 2. Reducing the digital divide, and 3. Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP).
But the pace of changes, such as IoT (Internet of Things), big data, Immersive Communications, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics has a reflective impact on Job Profile, Job Type and Recruitment Patterns. Still academic education is still considered many students' path to a better future. Therefore, preparation for future competency has to be taken now in order to groom a high-performing workforce. Competency is the combination of knowledge (factual, conceptual, contextual, procedural, and meta-cognitive), skills, abilities and behavioural capabilities. Raising awareness about the pace of socio-economic changes will let our workforce know which competencies the labour market will need in future. The pace of socio-economic changes is the outcome of the impact of digitalisation, which can be identified from three different perspectives:
1. Internal efficiency: It improves business process efficiency, quality and consistency via eliminating manual steps and gaining better accuracy.
2. External opportunities: It includes improved response time and client service, as well as possibilities of new ways of doing business.
3. Disruptive Changes: It involves changes in the operating environment of a company caused by digitalization.
The workforce's exemplary performance based on the level of competencies in rapidly-changing business environments is the key to sustaining business growth. An employer wants to see his workforce to be smarter, rather than harder. The change of nature of any business activity always warrants the job responsibility. Employability skills are getting much priority now. Employability skills are those necessary for getting, keeping and being successful in a job. Therefore, any specific skill set is no longer required. Hence, an employer always looks for competence-based human resources (as shown below), who have sound knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes and behaviour.
Example:
1. To define a problem g Skill
2. To identify potential solutions g Knowledge
3. To evaluate potential solutions g Skill
4. To try out different solutions g Behaviour
Employers always face challenges with recruiting the desired human resources from the labour market, because there is a gap in meeting the labour market demand. Skill mismatches push up the unemployment rate, though there are jobs. For example, an organisation offers jobs related to Informatics, but we do not produce any workforce in that area.
How to minimise skill mismatch:
* Aligning Education, Research and Business
* Aligning Education, Research and Innovation
* Aligning Universities, Laboratories and Companies
* Learning, Discovering and Innovating
* Teachers, Scientists and Entrepreneurs
There can be a dual education system comprising competence achievement and general courses targeting the following:
Human Resource Development
Human Capacity Development
Human Capital Development
Human Talent Management

Making the Vision 2021 and the Vision 2041 a reality needs to start reforms at the granular level -from family to society, strengthening connection between education and employment. There should be a social consensus on adopting and adapting disruptive changes. Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) should be promoted by both the government and the industry. In another word, the dream of Digital Bangladesh will come true when our workforce will have the competencies like creativity, innovative, improvisation, ict expert and social competence.

The writer is Enterprise Consultant, Infraoptimisation.
Email: [email protected]