Social innovation is essential

10, November

By Martin Padulla for staffingamericalatina Non-normality will be our new normality in the short and medium term. ...

By Martin Padulla for staffingamericalatina

Non-normality will be our new normality in the short and medium term.
Our ability to adapt continues to be tested every day on an individual and collective level. And projections indicate that this state of affairs will accompany us during the coming year even if we manage to find the vaccine that will free us from COVID. The implementation and logistics will be complex.
If we focus on the collective level, the solid, rigid organization, whether pyramidal or matrix, does not seem to have adequate answers for the reality that we have to live with. The liquid, flexible, resilient and agile organization will be able to better perform in changing environments. This requires different leadership and skills. This applies to both companies and states.
The deeper and more structural a crisis is, the more social changes it generates. The future of work is ahead of us. And acceleration requires speed of response. If we do not resolve now, it will not be possible to build that future
We need to train for a future of the work that is already among us. To produce apprentices in series and seriously. Education is essential. Trainers are essential workers. Trainers must be essential lifelong learners. The region seems to have lost its compass on this point.
A UNICEF report notes that 97% of Latin American students have not yet returned to the classroom. School closures affect 137 million children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to this study, the average loss of school days for children in the region is four times higher than for students in the rest of the world. COVID-19 has widened the educational gap between rich and poor families in the region.
Joint efforts and new perspectives will be required to solve the consequences of this delocalized natural disaster that has impacted the whole world but is showing a dramatic aspect in the region. There is no need to stop and analyze the opportunities that can be lost linked to the knowledge economy.
Last week, in a cycle called Coffee&Tea Chat organized by staffingamericalatina, I spoke with Bettina Schaller, President of the World Employment Confederation who told me that “to link funds or stimuli to digital transformation and sustainability as is being done in some countries in Europe is to look to the future. To look to the future.
In a context where governments determine exceptions to isolation and permits to circulate, social innovation is also an essential activity. Governments must look ahead, seeking to build a viable future.
In Latin America, in several countries, governments are looking backwards. In Mexico, faced with the unacceptable and reprehensible phenomenon of fraudulent outsourcing companies, operating outside the law, the government’s response was to look in the rearview mirror. The lack of control and the failure to apply the weight of the law to those who do not follow the rules, could affect those who energize the labor market through increased employability and the creation of formal jobs.
They will pay justly for sinners, said the Mexican president when describing the situation. A statement at least unsophisticated and not very innovative.
Millions of formal jobs are at risk in Mexico today when looking ahead means finding the path to recovery.
That path requires diverse forms of formal work, diverse forms of acquiring skills for the new labor normality, more dynamic, modern, flexible regulatory frameworks that allow for granting rights and formality to a job that is organized differently as a result of technological change and demographic change.
The way talent is organized in a country is the key to be competitive. The instruments exist to make labor markets work. We know, for example, that one of them is the ratification of ILO Convention 181 on private employment services. We also know what the appropriate mechanisms are for acquiring the ability to learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations with increasing frequency.
To act with the logic of the past would be to condemn future generations. Social innovation is the antidote to this terminal evil.
We need urgent agreements to address this future that has been rushed: various modes of training skills for work, various forms of decent work, portable rights, flexibility with social security 4.0, mechanisms to ensure lifelong learning for longer active life cycles and equal opportunities especially for the most vulnerable.
The possibility of creating inclusive and sustainable societies requires a strong commitment from all stakeholders.

The possibility of creating inclusive and sustainable societies requires an innovative look ahead. We need a path to recovery. And we need to start walking it now.