1. Turning the Tide
How Europe can rebuild
skills and generate
growth

2. Accenture’s latest research is called Turning the Tide: How does Europe
rebuild its skills base and generate new jobs. In a world that’s becoming
increasingly more competitive, Europe has amazing untapped potential
and yet we know that there’s a lot of unemployed people and this key
research looks at some of the structural weaknesses in the European
labour market and considers some of the policy recommendations to
improve the situation.
We went out and we talked to 500
key business people and policy
makers around Europe to find their
views about how we could improve
the potential within the labour
market of the European union
and at the heart of this research
is two fundamental paradoxes.
Seventy-two percent of the people
that we talked to said that they
believed that it was important
that Europe invested more in skills
and education and yet when you
looked on the ground and what
was happening in 2012 actually
only 18 percent of businesses were
going to increase their investment
in education and so what we see is
a gap between the need and what
is really happening on the ground.
And the second key paradox is one
of a skills imbalance, 43 percent of
businesses are saying that they are
seeing skills shortages and yet we
know that 23 million people are
unemployed. And so it’s not just
a question of unemployed people
and finding jobs, it’s actually that
we need the right skills for the
right jobs.
But there’s also a really urgent
need here, if we’re going to return
to 2008 employment levels, if
you’ve only grown at 0.5, half of a
one percent, it will take until 2019
for us to get back to those 2008
employment levels. If we were to
grow at nearer to two percent we
would be back to those 2008 levels
by 2014. So there’s a real need
here to balance the right skills,
with the growth opportunity. And
as we looked at what was going
on in Europe, we identified three
fundamental weaknesses in the
European labour market.
The first was around this untapped
labour potential, 23 million people
unemployed but when you put on
top of that that there’s at least
another 15 million people who
would like to work, people who
for example are older workers,
young people, this group of
people represents something like
40 million people in Europe who
would like to work and yet what
we actually find is that very often
businesses tend to treat them as
a homogenous group rather than
distinct groups with distinct needs.
The second big issue is one of
mobility and what we find is
that when you go and talk to
companies and businesses only
28 percent of them really believe
that they are tapping into the true
potential of the European labour
market. Most of them are focused
on what is happening in their
locality, or in their specific country.
And then the third issue is around
collaboration, what we find is
that most businesses believe it is
important to be able to collaborate
more with government, with
academic institutions to make
sure that they have the right
skills for their particular industry.
And yet only 30 percent of the
businesses that we talked to
were really collaborating with
other companies in their sector
to ask and address the issue of
are we getting the right skills
that we need for the future of our
industry? So, some really critical
structural weaknesses around
untapped potential, mobility and
collaboration.

3. And what the report identifies is
some specific recommendations for
what businesses and policy makers
need to do. So for businesses I
think there is a need to use more
data and analytics to truly be
able to map the skills base that
exists within their organizations,
particularly cross border. It’s about
adopting more flexible approaches
to be able to attract in some of
that untapped potential. It’s about
rotation of more jobs and it’s
about working up and down the
value chain so that big companies
are working with smaller
companies to really identify the
needs of what the skills are that
are going to be required in the
industry sector going forward.
And for policy makers it’s about
certification, it’s about recognizing
academic qualifications across
border. It’s about mobility, it’s
about helping high skilled mobile
people to work across borders.
And it’s also about collaboration;
it’s about trying to help make
sure that the public and private
partnerships are working together
in a way which is developing the
skills for the future.
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But perhaps the most important
conclusion to end up, is that what
business itself recognizes is that
in this competitive world it needs
to step up. Fifty-five percent of
the people that we talked to said
that business needs to take a
more proactive role in terms of
engaging in the skills agenda to
make sure that we are tapping
into that potential and we really
are developing the skills that will
help Europe be competitive in the
future.
Learn more about the research:
accenture.com/turningthetide
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services
and outsourcing company, with
more than 246,000 people
serving clients in more than 120
countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive
capabilities across all industries
and business functions, and
extensive research on the world’s
most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with
clients to help them become
high-performance businesses
and governments. The company
generated net revenues of US$25.5
billion for the fiscal year ended
Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is
www.accenture.com.