electronrun.com

I have decided to start a small series on employment & competitiveness, and their close relationship to technical know-how. Having lived and worked in different countries and regions in Europe, I have noticed that there is a pattern. In dynamic or traditionally industrial areas there is places and companies that have more steady employment, whereas in others there is considerable fluctuations.

By steady employment, I do not naturally mean the life-long employment model of Japan, but the ability to stay employed on a permanent basis, independently of the fact that one has to move companies or activities on a few occasions in a lifetime.

On a global scale, the cost of employment is of course a deciding factor, and everybody has their sight on China that keeps increasing its manufacturing capacity. However, in both the US and Europe, the more financially progressive states are not necessarily the cheapest. Take for example California, Washington, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. Do you get cheap labour in any of those? Far from it…

Employment and competitiveness depend on a multitude of factors, including national and local tax policies, incentives, infrastructure and more. Given however that a minimum of prerequisites is present, the game is decided to a large extend by the following factors:

• The educational system and how well it manages to follow changes in technology and society.
• The training system which will upgrade skills and modernise knowledge that becomes obsolete at faster rates than in the previous century.
• The universities and higher education in general, not only for the human resources that will give life to businesses but also as new idea greenhouses.

The concept of large industries that employ large numbers of people is a relic of the twentieth century. Of course we need large businesses, but from my experience in industry, the jobs based on large manual content are going quickly and will continue to do so as production automation tackles challenges one by one and whole manufacturing areas are gradually converted to complete automation. Take for example car body welding. Does anybody believe that we will ever go back to manual welding? But before you listen to all the gloomy predictions, remember that virtually all production activities need skilled operators that program machines and are heavily involved in technical decisions. Does anybody say anything about those people? And how do we get there? By quality education, that instills the technical element and value of IT in all activities, even to those that will not work in the technical field.

What is the sad truth is that if there were a large demand for people of such skills in north-west Greece where I live, it would be extremely hard to man businesses with CNC machinery or advanced CAD facilities. The educational system has failed and continues to fail in the cultivation of modern skills, while the EU financed training is centered on keeping unemployed people fed and ignores training needs of people already in employment. Present the same employment opportunity in say Germany or France or Sweden, and you would have no problem in getting a pile of skilled people CVs on your desk… You get the message?

Then there is the IT economy. Software, design, network installation and administration, things that most people associate with high-tech. They are not wrong, but the issue here is that if you think about it, there is no old and new economy. There might be purely IT activities -web design for example- but the reality is that even the smallest modern business today needs hardware and software, in other words a minimum of IT support. Move to large business sizes and you talk about ERP, CRM, doc management, you name it… Things go that way relentlessly, if you lose your opportunity to get on the high-speed train, chances are you will have to import -buy- the product or service from a competitor at a later stage, a condition difficult to overturn.

The web and e-commerce open up worldwide opportunities. Selling products is at the moment more straightforward than selling services, however efforts are being done in all fronts without the tech bubble signs of the start of the decade. Why? Simply because IT is now the backbone of every modern business activity. I have to say here that between countries there is huge differences as to the inclination of the economic activity towards manufacturing and services. The UK for example has made the service choice from the Thatcher era of the eighties but now realises that a manufacturing base is indispensable. Other countries have taken the manufacturing route and realise that service activities now related to e-commerce is an extremely good area to be into.

Irrespective of the activity bias, skills and knowledge -direct derivatives of education- are the most precious resources. Moreover, some economical activities are inevitably dying. They have to be replaced by new ones, and here being innovative is the best way to stay competitive in the longer term. Finland is a great example of a country that has based its success on high-quality education and training.

As different countries are in different development stages, in following parts I will come to examples of country specific examples and how they tackle the issue of education and training in relation to employment and competitiveness.