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As advances in technology continue to change the way we live and work, they are also changing the types of skills we need to get a good job. Currently, there are more than seven million open jobs in the U.S., and many business leaders say it’s because they can’t find enough men and women with the skills they are looking for to do those jobs.

I had a chance to sit down with Tom Finke, chairman and CEO of Barings, a $335+ billion global asset management and financial services company, to talk about how to prepare today’s workers for those high-skill jobs.

“We have demands for skills that are going unfilled. And it’s not just more computer science majors, it’s really across the board when you think of those able to service the smart appliances of the world. I think training and education and advancing it from what really is a 100-plus-year-old model to the future is important,” according to Finke.

Barbara Humpton, CEO of Siemens USA, agrees that looking at new models of education is important to bring workers up-to-date on the skills needed in today’s workforce. She believes businesses themselves need to take a more active role in providing that education.

“I really think life-long learning is what it’s going to be all about in the future. We’re spending a lot of time actually talking to colleges, community colleges, and universities about what they can be doing to engage with us as we build relationships and help prepare people, so they can come back into the academic environment, maybe throughout their careers,” Humpton tells me.

For Donato Tramuto, CEO of Tivity Health, many of his employees are already skilled in new technology since they are creating connective programs for health care and fitness.

“This company has been technology-enabled for many years. About 20 percent of my workforce are in technology. They’re developing the apps. They’re developing the interfaces. They’re developing how we implement the algorithms,” says Tramuto.

We hope you enjoy these conversations about the future of worker and the worker which took place at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2019 in Beverly Hills.

You can find Work in Progress, a WorkingNation podcast, anywhere you get your podcasts. Search Work in Progress and look for our logo.

Episode 106: C-Suite Solutions: Focus on the Workers
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, WorkingNation Editor-in-Chief
Producer: Anny Celsi
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts