Portugal. ″If it was a company unicorn, it could be a unicorn″
It was a day dedicated to employment and companies at the Paz e Amizade Pavilion, in Loures. Inserted in the exhibition “Loure invests in itself”, enhanced by the location, two debate panels brought together a set of communication on topics that are today, public and municipal entities of communication to the support and financing of the business sector for each reflection on topics that are today, today, more and more, unavoidable in companies and in society. “In the future, what jobs?” and “In the future, which companies?” they were like questions that served as a motto for the conversations, and for the participants who sought to provide answers and solutions.
Two years will bring about a disruption of a job market, at a global level, accentuating problems that have felt more difficult to feel before, and creating new workers for businesses, set of companies. First of all, work, work, which sustains more of our talents, but also the opportunities for a set of talents, which is also talked about information technology, and which today is transversal to many other stores. Topics that, during the morning, were discussed by Tim Vieira, businessman and investor, who presented the Brave Generation Academy, his latest project linked to education, on stage, and Pedro Amorim, Managing Director Experis Portugal and Corporate Clients Director of ManpowerGroup Portugal .
Structural reforms are needed
The new challenges of employment require different approaches from recruitment to the ability to retain talent in organizations. However, there are underlying issues that have remained the same for decades. In Pedro Amorim’s opinion, either it has difficulty in creating value in jobs due to the tax burden, types of contracts, and low efficiency due to the level of hiring. “This is a structural problem that needs to be looked at carefully,” he points out. However, ManpowerGroup believes that, on the business side, there is a huge effort to change. “Hiring and recruitment processes are evolving and following trends because companies will not be able to fill the vacancy, there are too many vacancies”.
However, the business sector will be able to solve little if there are no structural changes that depend on the will of governments. “It is necessary to restructure education, focus on reskilling and upskilling in society, and have the courage to assume that it is mandatory to change the education ecosystem, change academic curricula, look to the country’s future and see what it needs”, he warns. Pedro Amorim who adds: “There are structural decisions that have been discussed for more than 20 years without practical results, such as structural problems in education or in the relationship between the educational and business environment”.
Tim Vieira shares a similar opinion. “If we are waiting for the Government, we will miss another wave of what is needed: talent and fast”. The entrepreneur resorts to defending a growing bet on faster, more pragmatic and practical courses, to companies to help people who need it to lose weight. “We have to use technology and make companies think more than outside the box. We need to throw out the box and, above all, execute”, he reinforces. Basically, “less talk and more execution” because without concrete growth it will not be possible to guarantee and create wealth that will increase, consequently, increase shares and make the country more competitive at a global level. “It takes courage to change because the future of the country and our children is at stake”, he argues.
The issue of cuts is necessary for Pedro, from the perspective of love, an essential point for the change that is needed in the country. At this level, the tax burden remains a complicated problem for companies and an impediment to much-needed value creation. On the other hand, the contracting obligation is, in the opinion of the ManpowerGroup manager, another obstacle in the form of international resources, since they currently have their expenditure to fill. “With less bureaucracy, perhaps, the country can generate great results”, adds Tim Vieira who believes that structural decisions can generate great results, “it is necessary to achieve great results”.
Employers no longer control
In the new paradigm of work, driven by and by the entry of a new, more demanding generation into the job market, the hiring power of the new pandemic functions is being removed. “This new generation requires tabulation commitment, purpose and proximity”, defends Pedro Amorim. The official recalls, for example, the traditional management models managed all talent as equals. Today, this management has to be personalized. “Each person is a piece of a puzzle and has to be managed as such, and companies meet everyone’s expectations”. This approach, he believes, empowers people to choose the company they want to join. “People want companies that are not just working for shareholders. They want to work for a company that is good”, adds Tim Vieira, who also defends this approach in schools. “It is not the child who has to adapt to the school, but the school has adapted to each child”.
In fact, both participants argue that it is at an early age, and in the early years of school, that the approach should change. School and academic curricula need to be adapted to the needs of society and new needs, with a focus on soft skills that emphasize characteristics such as responsibility, autonomy, flexibility. And this is, they say, a reform that urgently needs to be initiated. In higher education, as they exemplify, it needs 30,000 software countries on the other and can only train around 6,000. “If we adapt to, we will be able to pay more to these people, the Government will earn more taxes, but it will guarantee more money in the economy”, Tim Vieira. The entrepreneur even though Portugal has to take advantage of being small. “Gerido is a company, a unicorn could be, talent is the country, but we can be at the center of the world, we have to believe and make it happen”, he reinforces.
No company can escape digital
The transformation of companies, particularly at the digital level, was the topic of the afternoon’s conversation at the conference “Loures invests in you”. On stage Peter Villax, administrator and president of the Business Association; Armando Militão, administrator of Valorsul; Pedro Cilínio, director of Investment for Innovation and Business Competitiveness at IAPMEI; and Bernardo Sousa, executive director of Portugal Digital.
Among the main ideas today of the level of debate, it stands out regardless of its digital maturity, as organizations do not like the transformation supported by the technologies of digital maturity. “Companies that don’t help change”, believes Peter Villax.
But transformation scares, and change is a factor of discomfort for any human being. However, like Bernardo Sousa, organizations need to be able to meet these requirements, namely the leaders that can be defended as structures of their leaders. “It’s essential to have this ability to look ahead.”
An opinion shared by Armando Miltão who recognizes the challenge of resistance to change. At Valorsul, a company that treats solid waste in a universe of 1.7 million people, a transformation of a little digital activity has guarantees of treatment with some internal barriers that have gradually been overcome. Gradually supports the administrator, employees realize that the technology helps and makes it simpler and more efficient as their functions. Today, he exemplifies, workers are proud to realize that the sensorization of garbage cans makes it possible to organize routes more efficiently and not have to go to a place where there is no garbage. The company also managed to reduce the use of paper, solving a set of digital processes, which also facilitates the day-to-day of employees in the administrative area.
However, for many companies, the ability to transform digitally depends heavily on funding and state support. The Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) aims to help at this level, but the processes are not always straightforward. Peter Villax, from the entrepreneur’s perspective, believes that it is a good program, but very ambitious and difficult to execute. “Portgal is not prepared, it wants to be on the supply side of investment products, it wants to be on the supply side of investment products, and this is configured by problems in its functioning”, as is configured, for example, the verification time .
Defending “his lady”, Pedro Cilínio recalls that part of the delays have to do with the expected increase in rotation and with the expected increase in rotation. “We had triple the number of applications and, in the case of Mobilizing Agendas, an available investment of 930 million that grew to 3 billion”. The person in charge of IAPMEI also recognizes the lack of resources and the difficulties in resizing the capacity to respond in a timely manner. “We have 7 million investment with a process that started in 2021 and is ending now. It took more than a year, but it is a very high amount, and more than IAPMEI manages in PT2020 in 7 years”, he explains.adding that “it is not an easy process and every day an effort is made, but not everything is solved”.