The response to coming crises “It lies in sustainable and inclusive growth,” says the McKinsey consultancy. In labor terms, that means promoting equal opportunities, paying fair wages and promoting the acquisition of technological skills.
“The challenges for sustainability and inclusion are great and urgent,” says the firm in the report Towards a sustainable, inclusive and growing future: the role of companies.
They are because with an expanding knowledge economy there is more demand for people with better technological and cognitive skills. At the same time, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly displacing routine work, he warns.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, where “the richest 10% of the population earn 22 times more than the poorest 10%”, automation of different tasks could increase inequality, has pointed out the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Not only governments have the obligation and responsibility to act immediately, McKinsey points out. “The companies, which generate more than 70% percent of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), will be a key player”. The bigger they are, the greater their mission.
However, in recent years, despite the fact that companies in G20 member countries —including Mexico— pay more 11,000 million dollars a year in wages, “the part of their income that goes to their workers has fallen.”
The consultancy report was presented at the last B20 Indonesia Summit 2022, organized by the G20 business community. In it, he indicates that companies with more than 1,000 million dollars in revenue represent about 30% of global GDP.
And these are “particularly important to attract workers to formal jobs, productive and skill-enhancing in low-income economies. In short, they have the reach and innovative capabilities needed to transform and shape how the economy grows.”
Proposals for large companies
One of the initiatives that they must undertake is to “prioritize the inclusive recruitment”. This means modifying the recruitment processes so that more women, indigenous people, Afro-descendants, non-binary people, people with disabilities or the elderly have the same floor to join the company.
Once inside, the training and mental health care These are other measures that accelerate “a virtuous cycle between innovation, growth and the income of workers.”
Also, the innovation “It drives overall growth, more income flows into households and can be spent by those below the empowerment line, or saved and invested for sustainability.”
That innovation to which McKinsey refers is also the search for collaboration with governments. But it is primarily companies that “can change the way they create and share the benefits”with their workers and workers.
But sometimes organizations are reluctant to invest in training programs for your staff “if the business case is not obvious, if those workers are likely to move elsewhere” or if they don’t know what benefits it might bring them.
However, when companies offer training “assessing demand and need for skills in the future, designing a portfolio of initiatives to close the skills gaps and launching an organizational structure dedicated to learning, success is almost guaranteed”, he maintains.
