1. Meeting the skills gap:
Lessons from the private sector
Best practices of WBCSD members in emerging markets
Overview presentation, January 2015

2. Challenge: Meeting the skills gap
• Skills mismatches: one of the major constraints for the
private sector to create more and better jobs
• 45+ million job seekers entering the labor force each
year
• By 2020:
 Global surplus of 90-95 million low-skilled workers
 Global shortage of 83-85 million high- & mid-skilled
workers

3. Challenge: Meeting the skills gap
• Situation particularly delicate for companies
operating in emerging markets
• Triple challenge:
 Rapidly find a large number of employees with the right
set of skills
 Insufficient quality and quantity of goods and services
provided by their suppliers
 Very often high rates of unemployment and informal
jobs in the surrounding communities, particularly among
youth

4. Business case for skills & employment
• High levels of unemployment and vulnerable employment
 Drive social exclusion and inequity
 Prevent potential workers from productively engaging in the economy
 Depress consumption
 Generate social tensions (and often anti-business sentiment)
 Create additional drain on national economies with consequences for
government policy, social welfare provision costs, taxation etc.
• Shortages of appropriately skilled people
 Reduce the employability of the unemployed
 Create problems in terms of cost, quality and delays for companies
 Slow business growth and innovation

5. Case study collection
Workforce
development
Value chain
development
Community
development
Increasing skills & employability through:

6. Case study structure
1. Company background
2. Skills gap addressed
3. Company solution
4. Results
5. Challenges
6. Key success factors

7. ITC case studies
• Vocational training program to increase
employability in rural areas in India
 2,500 youth trained for manufacturing
services sectors since end of 2013 (25% girls)
 Aim: 10,000 / year
• ITC Hospitality Management Institute
 Meeting India’s tourism industry growth with skilled
manpower
 60 managers graduating each year

8. SABMiller case study
• 4e Camino al Progreso enterprise development
program
 Working across its chain of small retailers
(tenderos) in Latin America
 Business skills, mentoring, networking to enhance
sales growth, retailer loyalty, reduce costs & risks
 Targeting 40’000 tenderos across 6 Latin American
countries by 2018 – and 190,000 by 2020

9. Vale case studies
• Valer training program – workforce development in
northern Brazil
 820 engineers and geologists trained in 5 years in partnership
with universities
 11,700 young students trained 2008-2011, about 2/3 hired by
the company
• Inove local content development
 Support the development of local SMEs and provide
their managers with relevant skills (finance, strategic
planning) to meet Vale’s procurement needs
 500 SMEs supported, more than 4,000 people trained
 Expansion beyond Brazil (Mozambique)

10. Road ahead
• Collect & analyze data focused on the actual impact
(incl. ROI for the company) of investing in education,
training, and skills development programs
• Second phase of WBCSD-Let’s Work collaboration to
focus on gathering information related to costs,
benefits, and overall value created through individual
company initiatives
• WBCSD to continue skills & employment
agenda within its Action2020 platform

11. More information
Download the brief at
www.wbcsd.org/social-impact.aspx
Filippo Veglio
Director, Social Impact
WBCSD
veglio@wbcsd.org