This document contains summaries from various individuals about a discussion on the future of work. Key points included: 1) The importance of making skills used in the workplace more visible to education providers, employers, and learners. 2) The need to better understand high performance workplaces and the skills needed to support them. 3) Scotland should focus on youth and vulnerable groups and consider international perspectives to prepare for the future of work.

1. Deborah Roseveare
OECD
I’ve learned the importance of making meta skills visible - to education
providers, to employers and to learners. Making those skills more visible will
generate many benefits throughout education, training and the workplace.

2. My main point of advice would be to encourage a look at how skills are used
in the workplace, to understand better how high performance workplaces
operate and what skills are needed to support them.
Deborah Roseveare
OECD

3. What I’ll take away is the importance of this issue of the future of work -
probably one of the defining issues of our time in terms of prosperity and
wider sustainability. We had some great ideas and great learnings from the
international representatives.
David Wilson
University of Strathclyde

4. We need a much richer discussion about the future of work. There’s been lots
of debates, academic papers and policy documents but by really having that
deep discussion about the lived experience of people in work we can try to
draw it all together.
David Wilson
University of Strathclyde

5. My advice is to continue your effort to prepare for Scotland’s future, with a
specific attention to youth and vulnerable groups.
Nicolas Niemtchinow
International Labour Organisation

6. It was an exciting experience to have such an international discussion and
what I will take back home is that it’s so important to consider these issues, not
only a domestic point of view, but also from an international perspective.
Clemens Wieland
Bertelsmann Stiftung

7. I think that the success of an education system is not determined by the
number of graduates it produces but by the number of graduates that are
adequately employed afterwards. To ensure secure employability we need to
link education with the labour market.
Clemens Wieland
Bertelsmann Stiftung

8. James Dunphy
Robert Gordon University
The thing that I will take back is the role that we can play in helping Scotland
respond to the future skills needs. In particular the requirement to look really
carefully at what people need at different stages of their lives.

9. James Dunphy
Robert Gordon University
Be ambitious - there was lots of commitment round the table about what we can
achieve if we work together. We should think more broadly about how we can
help individuals, whatever their circumstances, to improve their life chances.

10. One of the things I will take back to my work from today is the importance
of thinking about skills in firms and the role of management. If we are
giving young people these new skills need to make sure that we have the
management in place to make use of those skills.
Daniel Sandford Smith
Gatsby

11. I think Scotland should take advantage of what it already has. It has a great
enthusiasm for education; it could build on this in a way some countries can’t. It
is also quite outward looking and I think it should build on these strengths and
not start with a blank sheet of paper.
Daniel Sandford Smith
Gatsby

12. One thing I will take back to my work from today is the meta skills diagram -
albeit in draft!
Dominic Munro
Scottish Government

13. Finding a way to persuade employers that they need to invest seriously in
upgrading and reskilling their staff sounds very important – if this is largely a
publicly funded effort then we won’t get the progress we need.
Dominic Munro
Scottish Government

14. It’s always good to have the opportunity to take what you know, build some
new things into it, look at it from a different perspective and take a different
approach. It doesn’t always happen very often!
Hugh McAloon
Scottish Government

15. This project is looking at a lot of complex issues. The drivers we’ve talked
about today are big, going at quite a velocity, accelerating and interacting in
ways we don’t quite understand. Making some sense of them is hard in itself. If
you want this work to make a difference you’ll need a compelling sales pitch -
keep it as simple as you can.
Hugh McAloon
Scottish Government