By far most young people in GCC fear effects of climate change,

Overwhelming majority concerned, but they don’t trust business to fix problem

ABU DHABI // The vast majority of young people fear the effects of climate change on their future, but only half of them trust firms to protect the environment, a new survey suggests. The study canvassed 1,294 people aged from 18 to 29 in the GCC states. It found that 92 per cent thought global warming was a problem and the environment was at greater risk today than 20 years ago.

More than half believed their education had prepared them to face the challenges of global warming, and eight in 10 believed that warming would change the nature of jobs.

Despite more than half believing a solution to warming could be found, only 6 per cent said it was their generation’s top priority, and a fifth put protecting the environment in their top three priorities.

Four out of five young people trusted experts and academics to mitigate the effects of climate change, 77 per cent trusted non-government organisations and three out of four trusted their government to protect the environment. But only half of respondents said they trusted companies to help protect the environment.

“It is encouraging to see that 9 out of 10 millennials in the GCC are concerned about the environment and they remain cautiously optimistic that solutions could still be found to counter the issues,” said Kailash Nagdev, regional managing director of YouGov, which carried out the survey.

“The young are leading the way by making cautious choices in terms of career paths and companies they work for, which could help them work on some of these solutions. “The above combined with lack of trust in companies signals that organisations that genuinely care about the environment would be the brand of choice for employment and purchasing decisions for the millennial workforce.”

YouGov questioned millennials in the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman.

Perhaps unfairly, millennials – the generation of young people born after 1984 – have been branded the enfants terribles of the 21st century.

In a recent interview, the motivational writer and speaker Simon Sinek, author of the modern leadership classic Start with Why, called them entitled, narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused and lazy, not to mention that today’s leaders find them tough to manage. And yet they are a key recruitment demographic for top companies seeking to stay relevant, develop and branch out into ever more profitable unchartered territory. Before we consider how we can fulfil these millennials and make use of their full potential, let’s follow Sinek’s advice and start with why we need them.

Millennials have been brought up by today’s helicopter parents to believe that they are special, that they can have everything they want. So these youngsters turn up to workplaces expecting “beanbags and free food”, a metaphor for a comfortable life and money for nothing. When they do not get this, instantly, they look for a new opportunity that will provide it. Millennials see themselves as their own global commodity in high demand: they have their finger on the pulse and traditional industries need to mine them for information so they can stay afloat in the 24/7 sharing, liking, tweeting and snapchatting the world in which we all live.

And for a company chief executive, whose average age is around 50, millennials (also known as digital natives) display a fluency in the use of computers, video games, social media and mobile phones, which initially seems necessary and desirable. On closer inspection, however, the dependency of business leaders on millennials is something of a mirage.

In fact, recent research from both the United States and the United Kingdom paints a picture of millennials in need of the vision, training and advice of their elders to survive and progress.

A 2015 report from the Princeton Educational Testing Service called America’s Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future reports that despite having the highest levels of educational attainment of any previous American generation, these young adults on average demonstrate relatively weak skills in literacy, numeracy and problem- solving in technology- rich environments compared to their peers.

It is not just in the US where millennials have been identified as lacking the right type of digital literacy to be useful to the workforce. A report by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee details exactly what is lacking and what is required.

They go so far as to say that

“only urgent action from industry, schools and universities and from the Government can prevent this skills crisis from damaging our productivity and economic competitiveness”. Further research by O2, the UK telecom provider, showed that the UK needed an additional 750,000 workers with digital skills to meet rising demand from employers.

So millennials, these prolific users of social media and wearable tech, are actually far from being the saviours of the future.

In truth it is our chief executives, parents, head teachers and university vice-chancellors who will need to implement a digital strategy that will save our digital natives from themselves. The TechUK Manifesto for Growth and Jobs 2015-2020 report indicates the pressing need for high-level specialist skills in data science, cyber security and data security as a result of high growth rates associated with key emerging technologies. Samsung recommends that universities need to be encouraged to provide “code conversion courses” to help graduates from non- computer science backgrounds to enter the tech sector. Witnesses for the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee impressed upon them schools will need to offer high quality computer science options as well as invest heavily in former ICT teachers to upskill them. They will also need to ensure that all teachers have mainstream technology and digital skills across the curriculum and not only in designated ICT classes. Regulators such as Ofsted and the KHDA need to add computing to the list of core subjects. Research by Nominet Trust shows that parents’ perceptions of digital skills significantly influence their child’s level of digital skills. To facilitate economic growth and ready their offspring for the future, parents also need to encourage children’s internet and IT use and recognise the range of key emerging technologies which will be the key employers of the future. TechUK points to seven major areas: the internet of things, wearable technologies, big data and data analytics, 5G and associated wireless technologies, robotics, autonomous vehicles, advanced manufacturing and building automation.

Industry is changing at a rapid rate and today’s graduates will need to upskill and adapt.

Only when educators, employers and parents club together can we provide the type of work-ready millennials which the Higher Education Funding Council for England has identified we will need. Millennials themselves will also need to recognise that far from being global commodities in high demand, they are in fact global liabilities who will require a great deal of investment by families, schools, companies and most crucially by themselves if they are to remain employable over a lifetime.