“If they want to thrive in the new World of Work, resilient organizations will put a priority on identifying, attracting, and engaging people with the right skills and experience to achieve their goals. Their workforces will embrace many types of workers — permanent, interim, in-person, remote — and will engage partners anywhere in the world. Last but not least, they will encourage continuous learning to support the upskilling needed across the workforce to address looming talent shortages.” – Bert Miller, President and CEO, MRINetwork
Europe, Middle East and Africa
Global pricing and demand for office space will take almost five years to recover from the damage wrought by the pandemic, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield. Vacancies worldwide are expected to peak at 15.6% in 2022, with about 95.8 million square feet (8.9 million square meters) of space emptying over the next two years. That’s more than during the 2008 financial crisis, when tenants abandoned 85 million square feet of offices, according to the real estate services firm.
It’s anticipated that it will be 2025 before office markets rebound to their pre-COVID levels, when vacancies worldwide averaged 10.9%, according to the report. The pressures and pace of recovery will vary regionally based on the persistence of job losses and remote working reduce space needs in North America and Europe. The report assumes businesses will need common space to foster the innovation, productivity, and teamwork that are hard to sustain when everyone works remotely. Executives of some of the world’s biggest financial and technology companies are campaigning to get employees to return to the office, but so far workers have been reluctant to come back. In the U.K., banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. are telling employees to stay home to help contain a resurgence of the virus. Others have had to send workers home after new infections cropped up.
The share of people working from home is expected to double over the next five years, growing to 10% in Europe, where it’s projected that rents will fall 7.8% next year and 1.7% in 2022 as vacancy rates rise to 10.5% from the current 6.4%. Office-job losses are expected to be approximately 1% this year and 0.4% in 2021 before starting to grow again.
Asia-Pacific
As the world contends with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cultural and creative industries are experiencing a rapid digital migration, with increasing digital consumption of culture, digital art production, and streaming. Yet, in this digital transition, women are facing many challenges, according to a report in Business News Asia.
To address these issues, UNESCO recently hosted an online debate that brought together artists, cultural professionals, and digital entrepreneurs from Asia and the Pacific to share their experiences and serve as a source of inspiration for new generations of creative women. Covering the topic of ‘Digital Creativity and Women Entrepreneurship’ were participants from Tajikistan, Vietnam, Nepal, and India.
The program is part of an UNESCO initiative designed to strengthen gender equality within the digital creative industries. It addresses the different needs, aspirations, capacities, and contributions of young women in developing countries, helping them to build their technical and entrepreneurial skills. “Women are less connected, possess lower digital literacy skills, have less access to training programmes, and are less likely to be hired by technology companies,” according to the 2018 UNESCO global report Reshaping Cultural Policy. The report also found that women entrepreneurs often remain invisible in the digital creative industries, even though they represent half of those employed in these sectors worldwide.
Americas
According to the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, in order to keep up the positive economic momentum of recent years and boost competitiveness, Latin America and the Caribbean need to implement further structural reforms and strengthen investment in infrastructure, skills development, and innovation. The report finds that productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean remains low, but there are still success stories. Here are the top five performers in the region:
- Chile remains the most competitive economy in Latin America, with a strong institutional set-up, low levels of corruption, and an efficient government.
- Panama follows Chile in the regional rankings and remains the most competitive economy in Central America, with some of the best port and airport facilities in the world and a strong adopter of technology.
- Costa Rica continues to rise in the rankings, thanks to a very stable profile, strong institutions, and one of the best education systems in the region.
- Barbados continues to suffer the consequences of the global financial crisis, but it still ranks fourth for overall competitiveness thanks to a fairly skilled labour force and a solid infrastructure.
- Brazil drops one position in the global rankings, due to insufficient progress in fixing its poor transport infrastructure, but it still has significant strengths, most notably its large market size and its fairly sophisticated business community.
See the next five rankings here.