World Youth Skills Day

By Beth Warman, RHG Consult Learning Coach

Young people consistently demonstrate an impressive resilience; offering solutions and raising their voices so that they are heard in conversations about their future. All while they face countless seemingly impossible challenges: climate change, racism, war…

World Youth Skills Day is an excellent opportunity to reflect on this question. With the younger generations moving into the world of work, we should be thinking about what we can do to help them to not only fit into careers, but to innovate and bring fresh eyes to existing business models and roles.

To do that, we should be actively promoting the personal strengths that they already possess, alongside developing classic CV skills. The critical consciousness (a capacity to question the status quo and challenge systems of oppression) that many young people already demonstrate offers a new perspective for professional environments. The changes that we’ve experienced during the pandemic illustrated not only the importance of being able to adapt to a constantly changing world, but shed light on existing inequalities that – let’s admit – many of us had the privilege to ignore.

Understanding this is essential to meeting the 2030 agenda and UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that emphasise the importance of education, especially technical and vocational skills, in creating a fairer, safer and more sustainable world.

In this, we should also value young people’s impressive communication abilities. While many of us are afraid of constant technological advancements that are changing the rules of the game for employment, young people are able to adopt these new technologies and creatively adapt them to their needs. The ‘call-out’ culture that social media has created, for example, allows young people to learn to use their voices to create accountability and speak up in the face of inequality.

Young people, therefore, are entering organisations with an existing awareness of, and ability to talk about, many social and environmental challenges. In fact, research shows that this plays an important role in where younger people choose to work, with the majority of the newer workforce caring about how their employer affects, and contributes to, society. Vocational education and training offers the opportunity for young people to visualise and implement changes to create environments and cultures that they want to be a part of.

At the same time, there isn’t much point in promoting skills for environments that aren’t accessible. We should also be actively working to reduce barriers to opportunities. Socio-economic status, gender, disabilities, race and many other elements of people’s identities still limit their access to opportunities in work and education. Frankly, how can we tell young people that their contributions are important when this message isn’t the same for everyone?

While it’s hard to admit, we all live and work in a world that upholds these systems. You, I, we, all have a role to play in creating professional environments that young people want to, and can, be a part of. While they hold immense strength, we should not be placing all of the responsibility onto young people. We should be offering them skills and wisdom, but we should also not be afraid to embrace new ways of thinking. In the process, we must ensure that we are protecting the well-being of young people and offering them the space and support that they need to lead the way in creating innovation and tackling our biggest challenges.

The RHG Grow Academy offers a broad range of webinars that are aimed at personal development as well as more focused sessions on specific industry sectors, such as Project Management. More details about all of our webinars can be found here