The global economy and society is undergoing a massive digital transformation which offers enormous opportunities for growth, innovation and jobs. But as the world becomes increasingly digital, the skills that people need to land great jobs or grow successful businesses are changing.

In the next 10 to 15 years, 21 million new jobs will be created (21 Jobs of the Future by Cognizant, 2017), and 90% of all jobs will require at least some level of digital skills (European Commission, Europe's Digital Progress Report, 2016). Yet, we continue to see gaps in skills and readiness across all regions, with research from the European Commission suggesting that 44 percent of the European population and 37 percent of its workforce is not yet digital ready.

The one thing that is clear is that to ensure opportunities are created in a way that benefits society and doesn’t leave workers in the lurch, governments, businesses, educators and communities will need to work closely together. We recognise the fundamental role the private sector must play in filling this up-skilling gap, and want to play our part in helping those at risk of displacement to acquire new skills.

As early as 2014, we saw that there was a large digital skills gap and it was growing. To help build a bridge, we launched Grow with Google to provide free training to help people get the right skills to find a job, advance their careers or grow their businesses. Through bite-sized lessons, our online training platform allows people to design their own learning plans and learn at their own pace, so that everyone can learn no matter where or when. We also offer offline trainings through permanent hubs, bus tours and tailored initiatives like Market Towns with a local approach focusing on job seekers, small and medium businesses, startups, developers, and many more. This approach allows us to reach everyone, even those who live outside the big cities in more desolate and digitally low-skill areas, providing training for those most at need.

We launched Grow with Google with a simple but ambitious goal; to help anyone find a job, advance their career or grow a business. To make sure our training makes a real impact in people's lives, we focus on the skills needed for growing occupations. Based on existing research, we’ve developed an in-depth content strategy to ensure we cover the skills needed to up-skill people for the jobs of the future, which according to the latest World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report range from technology design and programming to critical thinking to emotional intelligence. Our training is also product-agnostic, meaning our learning content is platform-neutral and covers much more beyond Google products. Finally, to ensure our programs are recognized by employers and lead to jobs, we work with IAB Europe to guarantee a pan-European certification and other partners, such as Udacity, offering scholarships to in-depth training programs with industry-valued

We scaled Grow with Google by tapping into:

- Online and offline: Personalised f2f training includes city tours in major cities as well as remote areas to reach a vast population. However, small business owners have little time in their busy schedules, so we also offer personalised online training plans which they can do whenever they want and across any device.

- Local needs: We know challenges in each country are different so we adapted our training to local needs. While in Spain we launched Actívate to help tackle youth unemployment, in Egypt Maharat Min Google focuses on women, whose contribution to the workforce can have a profound economic impact.

- Partnerships: We have only been successful because we’ve worked in partnership with e-learning partners and local organisations, such as universities, chambers of commerce and libraries, who help us spread the message and give credibility to what we do.

Since 2014, Grow with Google has trained over 10 million people across Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2018 alone, we trained more than 2 million.

To show how our training translates into real economic impact, we work directly with research agency Ipsos MORI. Within our Digital Workshops programme alone, the biggest training program under Grow with Google, the results show that 45% of trainees reported to have found a job, grown in their career or grown their business. In 2018 alone, this represents more than 900,000 people including Zuzana Kunckova, who restarted her career as a web developer, and Segun Abodunrin who went from unemployed to founder of his own digital agency. And many more.

Trained and impact numbers derive from an analysis by Google on the basis of an independent and ongoing survey conducted by Ipsos that started in September 2016, in EMEA.