Megatrend: Global Knowledge Society
The knowledge society forces many companies to rethink how they organize knowledge and recruiting. Three starting points will help them get fit for the future.
Knowledge base
The performance of the global knowledge society will improve over the next twenty years. The importance of online knowledge networks in the Internet has increased significantly in recent years. For example, since the online encyclopedia Wikipedia was launched in 2001, the number of English articles has risen to over 3.7 million (as of October 2011).
Gender gap
Most experts believe the gender gap in employment will narrow further but will not completely close by 2030. Women currently make up approximately 40% of the world's labor force. 53% of adult women were employed in 2008, compared to 52% ten years ago. The employment rate for men was nearly 30 percentage points higher in 2008.
War for talent
The United States will need to add 26 million workers to its talent pool by 2030 to sustain its average economic growth of the last twenty years. Western Europe will need 46 million additional employees. Germany alone will have a shortfall of 4.4 million workers, with about half of them (2.4 million people) required in skilled professions such as research, consulting, healthcare and education.
