Last week I spoke to 2.7 million listeners across the UK, together with Ben Taylor of Vodafone – talking with around 15 national and regional radio stations up and down the country. 

There’s no greater joy when doing media work than regional radio.  There’s an authenticity, a genuine interest in the subject, a need to keep things fresh and real, a personality that shines through, which transcends the confines of the rather crampt conditions of the radio station.

We also recorded a web-TV interview 

The subject of the interviews was talent – prompted by commenting on the Vodafone Working Nation report, providing commentary as a, ho hum, ‘employment and business guru’ (They said it so it must be true).

My credentials were established by Tomorrow’s Global Talent, and the media brief made familiar reading: 

_{Today’s business world faces new and multiple challenges – challenges which make traditional approaches to skills and talent management ineffective. Simply going back to the old way of doing things will not lead to success. There is no ‘business as usual’ to return to.}

_{What this requires is a reassessment of skills, talent, values to build a new framework for business that goes beyond silos of skills that are related to roles rather than the capabilities of the individuals fulfilling them.}

_{Talent has become too narrow a definition, often focused on just the ‘high flyers’ in an organisation and ignoring the capabilities, aspirations and motivations of the majority of the workforce}

So far so good, and the data was pretty compelling, and provided plenty of hooks, the national data being broken down into figures relevant for each interview – neat, Vodafone!

The national findings were that:

66% of businesses are cutting levels of investment in training
91% of firms who have shed staff which believe that further cuts will or may damage skills base
37% of firms have experienced a reduction in headcount in the last 12 months
40% of firms who have reduced staff have regretted some of those losses in retrospect
10% of those aged 25-34 have found adapting to a new work role has significantly increased their stress levels in the last 12 months
50% of 16-24 year-olds have received no help in adapting to their new working role

What this describes is a picture of a nation on the edge of a skills precipice – cutting to the bone, the collective capability of firms under serious threat, 4 in 10 firms stating that they may have cut too far.

A nation gripped by the collective complacency that it will be ok because ‘we are all in the same boat’ – we are cutting back on training and people, but we won’t pay a price because everyone is doing it: er, not in India, China and elsewhere they are not …

And this is before we get into the whole debate about skills vs. talent - and the need to configure a whole bundle of skills, old and new, to create the new forms of value demanded by globalisation in the Age of Sustainability.

All of which for me in terms of saying hopefully interesting things is ‘pontificating as usual’ - so no way was it going to be that easy!  No way, indeed.

Which brings us back to: Multitasking Women Surviving Recession Better Than Men

‘The latest Vodafone Working Nation report, which surveyed thousands of employers and employees across the UK, shows that women are twice as likely to develop new skills to cover gaps in the workforce as their male colleagues’

6% of women have learned many new skills compared to 2.5% of men
14% of women feel they have had to learn new skills / increase their number of roles compared to 9% of men

And coming on our recent event with Alison Maitland, she of ‘womenomics’ fame, you could feel the ground shift, in a metaphorical way – interview after interview being asked, so why do I think that women are taking on new and wider roles, and learning new skills. 

The double-bind of being a woman in the recession: holding the family together and apparently holding the firm together at the same time.

It was just as well we had hosted the excellent discussion with Alison, Caroline Waters of BT and Kathryn McDowell, Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra (the first ever female CEO of a symphony orchestra in England) together with Kai Peters of Ashridge.

Because it got me ready, as it turned out, go figure, for these interviews – and in particular, for the argument that it is not only ok for me as a bloke to be talking about what women and men are good at, but important that we blokes challenge the assumptions that frame these debates.

More important still, the more subtle argument, that it is societal expectations and rewards that have created the view of what women and men are good at – and that much if not all that is needed in tomorrow’s workforce are not inherent traits of men or women, but are indeed things that men have got to come to terms with needing to be good at in the future.

Multiple capabilities, juggling roles, holding things together, emotional intelligence, seeing things from the perspectives of others, co-creating sustainable value.

Which brings me back full circle - Tomorrow’s Global Talent says that what may be emerging during the recession in the UK is the shape of things to come:

1. Businesses of the future must redefine the way they approach skills and embrace a far wider definition of talent;
   
   
2. They need to move from the deficit model of skills (fixing people by topping them up with new skills) to the mindset of inspiring and engaging people by tapping into the talent that they have, what they are good at and building on that
   
   
3. And business needs to be sustainable not just in how it manages and works with people, but also in what it expects those people to do.

An agenda for the Working Nation which we will need to become, and – perhaps led by women – is being born.  Green shoots which are worth looking out for …