Blogs

Today marks the start of our annual IBM Week of Impact¹, an event that aims to bring IBMers around the world together to celebrate the impact we have been making by volunteering in our work and social communities. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to our fellow IBMers, Non-Profit Organisations, and industry partners in Hong Kong who have worked with us over the years to bring positive change to our industry. 

As a female leader in the technology industry, I am passionate about ensuring everyone has equal access to opportunities that allow them to thrive. This is especially important as we all face a talent shortage and skills gap.

The skills gap is widening due to generative AI. 

Over the past five years, technologies like Hybrid Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) have accelerated convergence with industries to drive innovation.  

The implementation of AI will significantly boost enterprise productivity. For example, in customer service, AI-powered chatbots can handle repetitive queries, freeing customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues that require empathy, understanding, and decision-making skills. However, AI and intelligent automation are creating a new division of labour between human workers and machines, widening the global skills gap. The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted between 2023 and 2028, up 9% from its last five-year projection. Generative AI could push that figure even higher. 

IBM's annual Global AI Adoption Index recently found that 42% of enterprise-scale companies (with over 1,000 employees) have deployed AI in their business. Meanwhile, 40% are going through the experimentation and exploration phase due to ongoing challenges in AI adoption, including hiring employees with the right skills.

According to the WEF, closing the global skills gap could add US$11.5 trillion to global GDP by 2028, but education and training systems would need to keep pace with market demands. IBM has a legacy of investing in the future of work and is committed to addressing the skills gap in the AI era.  

Working together to address the talent and skillset challenge.  

At IBM, we take a skills-first interconnected ecosystem approach to addressing challenges. We work with schools, universities, NPOs, and industry partners to create a more diverse pipeline of candidates for technology-related jobs across all industries. We aim to make the learning journey more effective, foster trusted and verifiable credentials, and increase access to education and training. 

We focus on historically underrepresented communities in technology, and we realize our vision through social impact programs. For example, “New Collar” talent development programs to prepare young people for the skills-first positions focused on skills rather than university degrees, which are highly demanded across industries in the tech-powered era; and free education program like IBM SkillsBuild that helps adult learners, high school and university students, and faculty explore new technologies, build foundational skills for the tech-powered workplace, and earn digital credentials.  Through our unique approach, IBM has committed to skilling of 30 million people globally by 2030. To help close the global AI skill gap, in September 2023, IBM announced a plan to train two million learners through partnerships with non-profit organizations and universities in three years.

Celebrate #IBMImpact for the CLAP-TECH to nurture "New Collar" talents² for Hong Kong. 

On March 8th, 2024,  I had the honor to participate in the Fifth Anniversary Celebration³ of the Jockey Club Multiple Pathways Initiative - CLAP-TECH Pathway and the panel discussion on tackling the complex challenge of developing the right talents to meet the industries' needs. 

Along with the support of the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and other key industry players, we have offered many secondary students a chance to benefit from a non-traditional education framework.  Funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the CLAP-TECH is the first⁴ in Hong Kong to integrate a Vocational and Professional Education Training (VPET) pathway that spans mainstream secondary and post-secondary education while equipping students with the necessary soft and hard skills to meet the ever-changing market needs.

Over the years, IBM and IBM volunteers have actively engaged in supporting the CLAP-TECH, ranging from curriculum development to mentorship, arranging workshops related to chatbots and programming, facilitating overseas exchanges for CLAP-TECH students and teachers leveraging our “New Collar” program network at a global scale, and providing workplace learning opportunities through IBM Summer Internship Program.

We look forward to welcoming the next batch of CLAP-TECH students to join our Summer Internship Program in 2024 and let the #IBMImpact continue!

Leveraging our “New Collar” program network and volunteers' contribution at a global scale to help broaden the CLAP-TECH students and teachers' network is another benefit to this. For example, during Chinese New Year, we have helped 75 CLAP-TECH IT students visit Japan and learn from the “New Collar” students from two schools in Tokyo. In March, we facilitated 11 educators, including principals and teachers from the CLAP-TECH partner schools and HKBU, to visit the local NPO partners in Dublin, Ireland.

Those are just a few examples of how we, as IBMers, are making a difference in the communities where we live and work. Let's take a moment to celebrate the milestones and the work we've done in our passionate areas.   

Deepen partnership with VTC and make SkillsBuild accessible to more IT talents and professionals. 

Over two years ago, we announced the first IBM SkillsBuild Partnership in Hong Kong with the Vocational Training Council (VTC) to promote digital skills training in our market. The VTC is the largest⁵ VPET provider in Hong Kong, providing valuable credentials for about 200,000⁶ students across its 14-member institutions each year through a full range of pre-employment and in-service programs with internationally recognized qualifications.

As Hong Kong accelerates its transformation into an innovation and technology hub and integrates into the Greater Bay Area, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government continues to foster industry-institution collaboration and vigorously promotes the vocational and professional education and training led by the VTC⁷ , according to the new fiscal budget announced by the Financial Secretary earlier this year.

To address the pressing needs for IT talent across industries, VTC established its 14th member institution in November 2023, the Hong Kong Institute of Information Technology (HKIIT). This new institution aims to offer IT and relevant technology programs for students, working adults, and industry practitioners through collaborations with leading technology companies and industry players to bolster the IT talent pool collectively, facilitate IT talent flow across industries and the Greater Bay Area, substantiate VPET, and further contribute to the innovation and technology development of Hong Kong.

IBM is keen to deepen our SkillsBuild Partnership with the VTC. We will offer HKIIT the IBM SkillsBuild Software Downloads platform, which provides learners and educators free access to select IBM assets for classroom teaching and learning purposes.  The learners can earn IBM-branded digital credentials, which are widely recognized in the industry. SkillsBuild includes over 1,000 online self-led courses on AI, Sustainability, Capstone, Data Science, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, IBM Engineering, Red Hat Academy, and many other hot technical disciplines in the new AI+ era — as well as workplace skills like Design Thinking. 

To kick off the IBM Week of Impact, I have selected Education as a critical societal mission that we, as IBMers, can contribute to and make a difference towards.  As a business leader at IBM, a council member and Director of the Highly-skilled Professional Development of the Hong Kong Computer Society, and sitting on several advisory committees in technology-related roles in a local university and industry associations,  I encourage students, educators and IT professionals to leverage IBM SkillsBuild to acquire the necessary skills.   

I will continue to advocate for our skills-first interconnected ecosystem.   In this new era where every business has become a technology-enabled company, we need open technology to provide options and flexibility for these businesses, allowing them to create and use multiple AI models in a hybrid multi-cloud environment. We should remember that AI applications for business must be trusted, ethical, and value-empowering. Today's challenges of talent shortage and skill gaps are highly complex, requiring broad and continuous collaboration from various parties to address them.  So, let's work together to address them! 

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About the blog writer: 

Mimi Poon, General Manager, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited
@LinkedIn

Mimi Poon is the General Manager of IBM Hong Kong, responsible for the IBM business in Hong Kong and Macao region.  She leads the company to assist clients in digital transformation by adopting a hybrid cloud and AI platform.  Besides her IBM role, Mimi is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Advisory Committee of the IT Innovation Lab in School Programmes under the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, and the ICT Services Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. She is also a council member and Director of Highly-skilled Professional Development at the Hong Kong Computer Society.