Top tech firms taking lead in providing more opportunities for women in particular
A Lenovo employee runs tests for operating systems at the company's workshop in Hefei, Anhui province. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
As China pursues industrial upgrades and intelligent manufacturing, Chinese and foreign companies alike are ramping up their push to cultivate multiskilled manufacturing and digital talent to better empower people amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The efforts come as China's manufacturing industry is placing greater emphasis on the shift to high value-added fields, which generates new demand for digitalization and intelligence in the manufacturing industry, and thus puts forward more requirements for manufacturing talent.
Jonathan Woetzel, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, said that by 2030, about 220 million Chinese workers may need to change their professions, and it is advisable to expand the coverage of educational and skill development systems to include not just student populations but also the overall workforce of 775 million.
Government, industry and society as a whole need to work together to promote skills transformation in China, Woetzel said.
China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) highlights efforts to cultivate advanced manufacturing clusters and to promote the development of key industries including integrated circuits, aerospace, marine engineering equipment, robots, advanced rail transit equipment, high-end power equipment, engineering machinery and medical equipment.
At the same time, China faces a structural employment challenge in supply and demand, with companies having difficulties recruiting qualified staff and workers finding it hard to secure satisfactory jobs. There is a shortage of high-level skilled manufacturing workers, experts said.
To help solve this problem, Chinese tech giant Lenovo Group has launched a "purple-collar talent initiative" to help cultivate talent for the new intelligence transformation era.
According to Lenovo, "purple-collar" talent refers to employees who meet the requirements of intelligent manufacturing, are familiar with the actual manufacturing process, understand the corresponding technical theories, and have both hands-on operational and managerial capabilities.
Qiao Jian, senior vice-president of Lenovo－the world's largest personal computer maker－said the company hopes the "purple-collar talent initiative" can help drive an industrial upgrade in China and foster high-quality manufacturing development.
Under the initiative, Lenovo said it will leverage internal sources such as supply chains and its charity foundation to partner with universities and vocational colleges to cultivate people for a wide range of manufacturing industries. Currently, over 10,000 people benefit from Lenovo's vocational education initiative every year, and it aims to expand the scale so that more people can participate in the project.
"What we want to do at Lenovo is to empower the real economy through new IT, or intelligent transformation, and to promote the transformation, upgrading and high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. By 2025, China's demand for 'purple collar' talent will reach 9 million, and the talent gap between the demand and the supply will hit 4.5 million," Qiao said.
She said that in order to meet this need, Lenovo is building an ecosystem of industrial talent through student training and on-the-job learning, offering vocational and practical courses, and providing teaching and training programs.
For instance, the "New IT Industry College" developed by Lenovo Education creates courses based on Lenovo's smart manufacturing industry technology and high-level skills of employees. Vocational colleges use teaching content to promote industrial upgrading and echelon training for students, closing the loop between academic education and on-the-job requirements. The Lenovo Foundation provides opportunities for teenagers from rural and underdeveloped areas to enter vocational colleges to support future internships and employment, Qiao added.
Lenovo is also ramping up its push to reward frontline manufacturing workers at its factories to encourage more people to become advanced manufacturing talent. Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, for instance, said in March that he set aside 80 million yuan ($12.56 million) to reward its frontline workers for their efforts to overcome challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure production.
Liu Baomin, deputy director of the institute of vocational and technical education center at the Ministry of Education, said earlier that vocational education during the 14th Five-Year Plan period will need to provide talent support for high-quality economic development.
Deepening school-enterprise cooperation is at the core of vocational education. And more efforts are needed to improve the standards of vocational education institutions to ensure quality, Liu said.
Research shows that women have been more negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic than men, so companies are also working to help women in China improve their digital skills and embrace the digital future.
US tech giant Microsoft Corp, for instance, is partnering with a number of companies and organizations to empower women in multiple ways, as the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation worldwide and women face more challenges in both life and work.
Last year, it launched an initiative in partnership with management consulting firm DDI, which has helped more than 1 million women in China improve their digital skills and embrace the digital future by the end of 2021.
By bringing corporate leaders together in the Women Digital Future joint initiative, Microsoft and participating companies seek to empower women in this accelerated moment of digital transformation, so that they cannot only leverage the power of technology to achieve their own dreams but drive incredible value and creativity within their industries and society as a whole, thus unleashing greater impact in the digital age. These initiatives focus on four areas, namely, thought leadership and insights, awareness and inspiration, digital upskilling, and inclusive leadership.
Mindy Yeh, DDI Asia senior vice-president, said the company's global survey shows that there are nearly twice the number of female leaders at the top 20 percent of financially performing enterprises than in the bottom 20 percent. Moreover, they boast notable advantages in terms of collaboration, synergy creation and growth culture.
Cecilia Qi, general manager of pharmaceuticals and vaccines at GSK China, who is also a representative of the initiative's founding parties, said: "Digital transformation is both an opportunity and a challenge for women. This is especially the case in the new normal, which requires companies to provide women with more support to help them achieve better work-life balances and continue to attain success as they continue forward in their career."
"Success is gender neutral, and I believe that in the future, society will be more supportive and inclusive of women and empower them with more diverse and equal career opportunities," Qi said.
As Chinese companies increasingly go global, they also plan to help cultivate digital talent beyond their home turf to more areas. Huawei Technologies Co, for instance, said in November that together with its partners, Huawei will invest $50 million over the next five years to develop 500,000 digitally savvy individuals in the Asia-Pacific region.
Jeffery Liu, president of Huawei Asia-Pacific, said: "Cultivating innovative information communications technology, or ICT, talent ecosystems is fundamental to digital transformation. Leveraging shared innovations with win-win outcomes, we can harness the power of ICT skills to fly us into a digital future."
Huawei also signed a memorandum of understanding in November with the ASEAN Foundation, a body of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to fill the digital talent gap.
Datuk Sri Mohamed Mentek, chair of the ASEAN Digital Senior Officials Meeting, said, "I believe collaborations such as that between Huawei and the ASEAN Foundation to implement the Seeds for the Future Programme is the right step towards building a sustainable digital talent ecosystem in the region and we look forward to more such initiatives moving forward."
The ASEAN Seeds for the Future will also help contribute to achieving the objectives of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025, which are to increase the capacity of youth in the region to participate in the digital economy and to create a digitally inclusive society in ASEAN.ASEAN Seeds for the Future was launched in early 2022, inviting youth aged 15-30 in ASEAN member states to immerse themselves in a virtual journey of capacity building in leadership and digital skills.
