Tata Consultancy Services, (TCS) announced significant momentum in its partnership with the World Economic Forum and its Closing the Skills Gap coalition. Launched in 2017 with the goal of re-skilling or up-skilling 10 million people in the global workforce by 2020, the initiative has secured pledges from leading international businesses to retrain 17.2 million people to date, of which 6.4 million people have already been trained.
“Our collaboration with the World Economic Forum is driving systemic change to empower people with 21st century skills to participate in new opportunities created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” said Surya Kant, President, North America, UK and Europe, Tata Consultancy Services.“We are proud of the transformative impact of Closing the Skills Gap and encourage more businesses and countries to join this collective effort to realize the vision of a more inclusive and prosperous future for all.”
Closing the Skills Gap has established global and national platforms to address critically needed skills to re-shape education and training for the future. TCS created a dedicated online platform that enabled several leading companies such as Nokia, Barclays, British Telecom, and Mercer, to make measurable commitments to skills development, share insights, and offer best practices.
“The new world of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is rapidly becoming a lived reality for millions of global workers and companies. The inherent opportunities for positive outcomes for workers, the economy and society are enormous, yet crucially depend on bold action from all concerned stakeholders to instigate reform in education and training systems to prepare workforces for the skills of the future,” said Saadia Zahidi, Member of the World Economic Forum’s Managing Board and Head of its Centre for the New Economy and Society.“The Forum’s partnership with TCS on the Closing the Skills Gap project is one important step in catalyzing such action.”
To complement this business-led approach, the World Economic Forum is initiating and expanding national public-private collaboration task forces to prepare countries for the future of work. This approach has been rolled out in Argentina, India, Oman, and South Africa, and will expand to 10 economies by the end of 2020.
TCS’ commitment to retrain 1.2 million people is focused on three fronts; upskilling and reskilling its current workforce, preparing today’s students for 21st century careers, and empowering women, ethnic minorities and marginalized groups. To date, TCS has trained over 292,000 employees with new digital skills, who are helping to power many of its customer’s digital business transformation journeys.
TCS has also pioneered education and mentoring initiatives for young people on a global scale, collectively engaging more than 1 million students to date. In the US, TCS’ Ignite My Future in School program has so far enabled 5,050 educators and 300,000 students across 55 school districts to adopt a transdisciplinary approach and incorporate computational thinking into every school subject. In the UK, the IT Futures program has similarly reached 300,000 students by connecting charities, social enterprises and TCS employees to deliver retraining opportunities in schools and universities. In India, Bridge IT is now enabling critically needed primary school education and adult literacy in underserved communities across the country, and in Australia, TCS provides month-long internships to university students in Mumbai, India, adding cross-cultural business experiences and skillsets to their academic qualifications.
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