Business can support both those in our own workforce as well as those outside our workforce to be part of the future of work (and their own potential future workforce). It’s important to look at the skills holistically (soft and hard) to ensure that we’re arming them with the ability to not only get the jobs but also to succeed in roles. Mentoring is very important, but also finding ways to engage with them on their platforms, making it easy and sustainable: it’s important to understand the drivers for them.
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Microsoft’s YouthSpark Program: Microsoft’s YouthSpark initiative is an effort to create opportunities for 300 million youth worldwide,connect them with education and employment opportunities, and provide access to free computer technology training worldwide. Microsoft provides job and workforce readiness training to high school and college students, helping to bridge the gap between education and employment.
Nike’s Reach Your Potential Initiative: Nike’s Reach Your Potential Initiative is a global program dedicated to creating sustainable employment for young people by unlocking their potential and helping them define their future. The initiative works with partners around the world to provide mentoring, training, and life skills programming to young people.
Airbnb: AirBnB’s Global Impact Programs include an ongoing commitment to creating pathways to economic opportunity through job readiness and skills development programs, especially for young people. They are actively providing foundational technical and employability skills, as well as mentorship and job placement services.
Facebook: Facebook is taking several steps to help support youth employability. They include: Investing in coding and skills-based initiatives to help young people develop the skills necessary to enter the job market; Providing apprenticeships and internships for students and young people to gain real-world job experience; Encouraging employers to list job postings on Facebook to help increase visibility for youth to find potential jobs; Partnering with organizations to fill the skills gap and enhance technical skills through hands-on experience; and Developing a suite of online education pathways for upskilling and setting up digital technical training to help bridge the gap between school and work.
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Remote working has opened up many opportunities, particularly around flexibility - colleagues can work together from around the world without borders. However, this can be a challenge for young people starting their careers, who don’t have access to “passive” learning around behaviour and basic workplace skills (e.g. how to write an email).
This means businesses need to respond by actively offering mentorship - choosing to create opportunities and spaces to ask questions and learn these skills, so young people at the start of their careers can have access to this crucial development opportunity. This move from passive to active mentoring can aslo benefit the broader organisation, which can position itself as a hub of growth and development for all employees.
***Our third question today:
Especially in refugee youth employment, directed collaboration is key to supporting youth employability in the face of evolving work trends. This collaboration must be intentionally structured to ensure that the realities and contexts of the refugee youth take a foundational position in the development of required solutions. An example of how this can be done is through bringing key stakeholders together, led by social entrepreneurs, to analyse and address problems collectively. This type of collaboration could even take the form of an ecosystem accelerator, where social entrepreneurs work with policymakers, corporations, researchers, and other stakeholders to scale the impact in the refugee-youth employment ecosystem.
Other key collaborative strategies include:
Knowledge sharing platforms: Establish online platforms and networks that allow stakeholders to share best practices, resources, and success stories in youth employability, facilitating cross-learning and collaboration.
Mentorship networks: Encourage professionals to volunteer as mentors and connect with young individuals to provide guidance, advice, and networking opportunities. Similar to Na’amal’s career-mentorship practice that is part of our refugee work readiness programme, these mentorship networks ought to be built on accurate contextual understanding.
Skill mapping and forecasting: Foster collaboration between businesses and educational institutions to identify future job trends and develop curricula and training programs that align with those trends.
Advocacy and policy dialogue: Engage in advocacy efforts to influence policies that promote youth employability, creating an enabling environment for young people to enter and succeed in the workforce.
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On Leonora’s point above, I heard a really interesting example of a company pairing up older and younger employees. The older ones trained, as it were, the younger ones in writing emails and phone etiquette, and the younger ones trained the older ones in effectively using new technologies for day to day business as well as marketing. So an intergenerational approach can work well.
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Working together is key - partnerships such as YouthCan! between SOS Children’s Villages International and businesses including Deutsche Post DHL, AkzoNobel and Allianz mean that young people around the world can access opportunities that otherwise would not be available.
Because this is a global partnership between multiple companies, best practices can be shared and copied, further amplifying the reach of the programme. Businesses need to be open to learning best practices from each other, so successful programmes can be scaled up and more young people can be supported to kick start their careers.
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Agree with the points above, and especially around finding ways to expand networks. This is so important in order to be able to find opportunities or understand industries better and then target your skill set more intentionally. Routes into industries via work experience and internships help in this area.
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I LOVE this - great initiative!
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Multiple stakeholders should be able to recognize their own roles and their impact to create change in the current climate of youth unemployment. Key stakeholders to note would be the government, businesses, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, youth, and their respective family members. Strong communication and collaboration among stakeholders and systems will facilitate the process.
I’d also like to share some brief points I’ve read from an article that divulged Germany’s strategy to deal with youth unemployment.
An article regarding the responsibility of businesses and governments to promote youth employment divulged the strategy of Germany to establish the path of students to formal employment. The country utilized innovative tracking and monitoring of each graduate. For young individuals struggling to find a job, Germany found ways to troubleshoot with the prevelant issue. Local employment agencies in Germany already provided young people at this stage of their career journey with an extensive set of resources such as integration subsidies for hard-to-place candidates, job-entry coaching, and modular “return to learn” programs to build up qualifications and certifications.
References:
How business and government can bring young people into work. (2015, February 1). McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/how-business-and-government-can-bring-young-people-into-work
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Investing in Youth Development: Investing resources into youth development is leading the charge when it comes to creating effective programs to support youth employability. Making investments in jobs, training, and mentorships are great ways to foster the development of young people and help them gain the skills needed to be successful.
Introducing Early Career Support: Introducing early career programs to help young people transition into the workplace. These programs can provide mentoring, career guidance, and even financial assistance to help young people find their footing and launch their careers.
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Incorporating Soft Skills Development: As the workforce continues to change, companies are recognizing that soft skills are equally as important as technical skills. Providing soft skills development is essential for young people to make it in the modern economy, so many businesses are beginning to invest in initiatives aimed at improving soft skills of young people.
Incorporating Internships: Internships are a great way to give young people a chance to gain experience in a professional work setting. Companies are also beginning to introduce paid internships, allowing even more opportunities for young people to gain valuable work experience while earning a fair wage.
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Wow this is a brilliant initiative 
A reciprocal way to learn fom one another.
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I think paid internships is the most appropriate way to empower young people because it enables everyone to compete on eaqual footing regardlessof their economicbackground. However this is not usually the case since most internships that young people take are usually unpaid.
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From the perspective of young entrepreneurs, there are two key things that businesses can do - creating opportunities for youth-led business in their operating communities and in their supply chains.
On the Operating Communities, especially largemultii-nationals can create opportunities for young entrepreneurs within the wider community in which they operate. We’ve seen this work with extractive industries, taking a conscious approach in the largely rural areas to build a supportive business environment where they operate.
On supply chains, a key challenge for young entrepreneurs is getting access to markets/customer. YBI believes there is a huge opportunity to create opportunities for young entrepreneurs in supply chains. In the same way that businesses could create opportunities for youth-led businesses in their communities, they could do the same with their supply chains. Businesses need to challenge themselves to think differently about their supply chains and consider how these need to adapt to be more inclusive of young entrepreneurs. Often their procurement requirements preclude earlier-stage businesses from accessing these opportunities – it’s a real opportunity for businesses that are looking for ways to advance the “Social” in their ESG agendas.
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Paid internships are a must, in terms of equitable youth employability initiatives. Another important contribution from the business world would be to show support (or, rather, not oppose) increases in capital gains taxes and other sources of public revenue that would go a long way in preparing ALL youth better for the current world of work (regardless of social networks, place of residence or status). Discrete actions by equity-minded business help but, without public programmes and good-quality education systems, they will only tinker around the edges -and may end up benefitting those youth that needed the least.
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Business should invest more in skills labs for digital skills. AI will widen digital skills gap for for a typical African child making their future prospect of being employed slimmer
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Dixoni Emmanuel, Founder and CEO at Advancing Youth Opportunities Initiative (AYOI) a youth, Non-Governmental organization focus on jobs creation, environmental conservation and strengthen sustainable livelihood.
Based in Mwanza, Tanzania 
In our closing minutes of the LIVE portion of this Written Discussion - what would be the one piece of advice or experience you would like to share so we build on experience (and avoid reinventing the wheel)?
For scale, partnerships across sectors and industries to help create a multiply effect versus a reinventing the wheel effect. It’s important to create a mix, where possible, of global and local programmes that are developed with young people at the centre. Needs vary from country to country and ensuring you have a local lens to any programmes for maximum impact.
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