Contents

What skills are employers now looking for?

The impact of digital transformation

The sustainability revolution

Steps you can take

The 2023 State of Design & Make Report, written by Autodesk, provides insights from +2500 industry leaders to understand how digital transformation drives business resilience, sustainability, and talent management. The report identifies areas of upcoming change so that industry leaders can strategise and plan how their businesses operate in the future.

We have broken down the key insights we believe to be the most relevant to education and our takes on what they mean. The full report is worth reading, but check out our summary below if you are in a rush!

Whilst the report does not specifically focus on education, we believe it is essential for educational institutions & curriculums to prepare their students for the industries they will be working in once they graduate, not the industries as they have been, or even are right now.

“Seventy-two percent of respondents said that the workforce has evolved more in the past three years than it had in the previous 25 years.”

- Page 6, State of Design & Make Report

Therefore, the State of Design & Make Report is invaluable for educators and students alike to understand how our businesses are evolving and ensure that our future workforce is prepared for their careers.

Video Summary of the State of Design and Make Report:

Video Source: Autodesk | 2023 State of Design & Make - Talent
https://www.autodesk.co.uk/insights/research/state-of-design-and-make/talent?wvideo=3mtihfsnyq

As with many supply chains at the moment, the supply of talented workers is low, and the demand is high! This has led to an increase in companies hiring workers who do not have all of the required skills to complete their role, opting to provide improved in-house training and education rather than finding a worker with the skills necessary. Education must therefore re-prioritize specific content in curriculums to account for what businesses require from employees.

‘More than any other factor, business leaders and experts across industries identified attracting and retaining talent as a top challenge.’

‘More than 90% of respondents agreed that upskilling is important to their companies. Also, more than half said that their companies are hiring employees who lack the skills needed for their positions and plan to train them on the job.’

‘Respondents identified a broad swath of important competencies for the future,
including technology skills, collaboration skills, regulatory knowledge,
innovation skills, and the capacity and motivation for ongoing learning.’

- Page 6, State of Design & Make Report

In interviews for the report, “business leaders saying that they are looking for employees with broad, transferable skills (such as problem-solving and collaboration) who can then learn more job- and industry-specific skills after they are hired.'“

These changes will require educational institutions to increase their focus on providing students with a more holistic skill set that can be successfully combined with businesses’ in-house training once a student starts their career. Collaboration, innovation, and motivation for learning are essential qualities when finding talent. Education institutions must increase efforts to incorporate these skills into the curriculum if they want their students to fit into industry and make them more employable.

Skills of the Future:

Where employers see gaps:

“Software skills are increasingly important. Problem-solving and other so-called soft skills are becoming more important, as well: being able to communicate well, being able to work with other people, being able to work autonomously.”

—Steve Plumb, Senior Editor, SME Media, Manufacturing Engineering - State of Design & Make Report

“It’s very important that we look at designers as people that understand and anticipate users’ needs in connection with society’s numerous problems, in order to solve them by design. And realize that we are not simply driven by pure aesthetics and market trends.”

—Charles Cambianica, Design Director, Decathlon International - State of Design & Make Report

“Sometimes, new graduates’ knowledge appears to be outdated in comparison to our industrial practices. In some cases, our internal R&D is more advanced than the R&D at universities. We’ve developed tutorials based on our own patent pool to help new employees acquire knowledge about our internal development and patents.”

—MingLei Ma, Chief of Engineering Research Institute, China Construction Eighth Engineering Division Corporation (CCEEDC) - State of Design & Make Report

One of the key focus areas for the report is digital maturity, a measure of how much technology has been integrated into the workflows of a business. As industries digitise their processes, education must follow to ensure that students are not only aware of digital tools, but experienced users of them too.

Digital tools such as Autodesk’s Fusion 360, which digitizes hand drawing of designs and manual coding of CNC machines, is one example of a tool with which experience is desirable to an employer. In addition, Fusion 360 is completely free to those in education and can free up your budget to be used in other areas.

“...We encourage the younger generation to think about more efficient collaboration among teams by trying out new technologies in their workflow. It harnesses their creativity and becomes a power to transform the construction industry itself.”

—Hiroshi Kono, Senior Executive Officer, Daiwa House, a construction and homebuilding firm

“If we’re digitized, we’re at an advantage. I think that’s going to become more and more critical as we deal with climate issues and changing environments. The places that are not digitized need to get digitized quickly.”

—Dr. Amy Hochadel, Executive Director, Global Business, Connected Places Catapult, the UK government’s innovation agency for cities

Remote working has become far more prominent, and the ability to work online has driven significant change in businesses. Effective communication using tools such as Teams, Zoom or even WhatsApp are now essential to any business. Learning how to present and communicate in person is commonplace within education, and the same must be true when doing so online.

Sustainability is quickly becoming a topic of focus for many businesses. Not only are more resources being deployed within industry to improve sustainability, but employees are being required to integrate improved sustainability into everything that they do. The State of Design & Make Report focuses heavily on sustainability to uncover where businesses will be positioning themselves to be more sustainable in the future.

‘94% of respondents said they expect their industry/organization to make sustainability focused changes in the coming years.’

‘Respondents see sustainability as driving long-term business value, with some saying sustainability measures will eventually account for a substantial portion of revenue.’

‘Thirty-three percent of respondents at such companies said their organizations are using artificial intelligence solutions to become more sustainable.’

82% of respondents said their companies feel pressure from customers to pursue and achieve sustainability goals. Customers represented the strongest influence on driving sustainability improvements, with employees being the least influential.

Typically, it is seen that the younger generation care more about sustainability, showing that education on the topic is influential, however it must be ensured that efforts are impactful and not superficial. Integrating sustainability into other technical aspects of the curriculum is both possible, constructive and enthusiastically engaged with by students.

“Employees coming out of college, up to those in their mid-thirties and often beyond, really care about this.”

—Stacy Smedley, executive director at Building Transparency - State of Design & Make Report

“When you’re talking about making progress on decarbonization, a major component comes down to cost. We have clients that are very interested in carbon reductions and are accurately valuing the cost of emissions, but we also have clients who are not at that stage yet. At the end of the day, important carbon reductions may not get implemented if they’re not also cost-effective.”

—Dalton Ho, Regional Sustainable Design Leader, Associate, Perkins&Will - State of Design & Make Report

“We’re starting to measure sustainability in terms of equity. Whatever you’re going to build, you need to be thinking about how it impacts your community. Are the things that you are doing good for your company, good for your community, and ultimately good for the world?”

—Paul Makovsky, Editor in Chief, ARCHITECT magazine - State of Design & Make Report

The report highlights that sustainability is also becoming more important as a commercial revenue stream. It is therefore important that the financial and business implications of sustainability are taught to students. Sustainability is being integrated into all stages of business, but this effort must be done in a way that furthers the business rather than hindering it. Understanding sustainability through education leads to an increased ability to be successfully sustainable.

Based on the information gathered in the State of Design & Make Report, we have compiled a list of steps you can take within your educational institution to ensure that you and your students are prepared for the future of work. We understand that you, as the reader, may not be able to implement all of these steps due to time, curriculum, and hierarchical constraints….they are still worth being aware of!

• Incorporate practical assignments that simulate real-life working environments into your curriculum. Ensure students are forced to collaborate in team projects, support one another and practice managing team dynamics.

• Provide an environment where risk-taking is encouraged and failures are learned from. This will give students a safe space to understand their limits, understand how to learn from mistakes, and have a solid understanding of the way they work best. Owning errors and knowing your limits are also skills that can be learned.

• Take part in competitions and challenges that push students towards improving these skills. F1 in Schools & First Robotics are brilliant examples of competitions that makes students think about teamwork, communication, working with businesses for sponsorship, maintaining compliance with regulations, and more! If you can’t ft these into your curriculum, consider running one as an after-school club.

• Connect with businesses and industries in your local area to stay current on how industry operates and prevent your curriculum from becoming outdated. Companies are often happy to help you create or support a curriculum, helping to keep it current. An online community (such as the Autodesk Community) can be a great way to connect with industry professionals!

• Integrate online collaboration and teamwork within your curriculum. Students are now used to receiving lectures & lessons online, but the skill they need is to collaborate with their peers using online tools. Push students to create a Fusion 360 Team, Slack workspace, or MS Teams project and use it for the group project they are working on.

• Sustainability should not only be talked about but practiced within projects, active discussions, and the curriculum. Students are often enthusiastic about sustainability, so use that to ensure that methods of understanding and improving sustainability are learned so that they can be implemented within the industry. The aim is for a student to start work at a new job and immediately be able to implement changes that improve the business's sustainability (and potentially the profit).

• Teach your students to not only practice sustainability but also to prioritize and drive it! The report shows that, while other influences exist, employees’ advocacy of sustainability impacts business-wide adoption. Ensure that students enter the workforce with the drive to make change and not just implement sustainability when it suits the business they are working for. This can often be achieved through simple conversations with students and telling them to drive change!

Industries and businesses are growing in digital maturity - don’t get left behind!
Contact us to arrange your free 30-minute consultation where we will discuss the software, machines, and curriculum changes you could make to best prepare your students for the future of work!

EduCAD is a CAD/CAM training company specialising in delivering Fusion 360 and manufacturing training to industry, educational institutions, and individuals. We offer both in-person and online training, irrespective of your skill level.