Many business people, workers, students, economists and academics from New Zealand and overseas attended Labour’s recent Future of Work conference in Auckland. It was an exciting two days that created lots of buzz around the changes in the global marketplace, emerging jobs and professions, and the skills Kiwis will need to keep abreast of fast-paced change over the next few decades. 

During the Conference, Labour released 10 Big Ideas, gathered from all our own conversations with a huge variety of people around New Zealand about these issues. Since an estimated 46 per cent of jobs will be disappearing in the coming decades, people are getting involved in helping shape the future and creating the toolkits Kiwis will need to flourish.

These 10 base concepts, such as Digital Equality, Business Clusters and maximising competitive advantage, Building Wealth, and Reforming the Transition Between Education, Training and Work, provide the framework for specific policies and actions that will ensure decent work and income security for all.

In January, we announced we’d be phasing in three years of free post-school education or training across a person’s lifetime for anyone who hasn’t had those opportunities.

However, not everyone is suited to formal education or training. Some people learn by doing. Some of our best-known entrepreneurs have learnt everything on the job. The young people of today will most likely have to generate more of their own income and will experience far less stable work than their parents and grandparents. Encouraging their business skills will be crucial.

Knowing the next generation of smart and innovative young Kiwis will need nurturing and capital to get successful ideas off the ground, the next Labour government will establish a Young Entrepreneurs Plan.

We will encourage innovative, young entrepreneurs, aged between 18 and 23, to create their own successful businesses by providing them with training, a business mentor and up to $20,000 in a capital grant for successful applicants.

The one-off start-up grant has a safety net of funded business training, an ongoing business mentor and a business plan approved by an independent panel of experts. Grants would be capped at 100 per year for the first three years.

This would mean that young people who have a good business brain and the drive to make their ideas work would have every opportunity to establish a good business and help determine the future of work. New Zealand needs more innovation and more successful entrepreneurs. This small investment would help create the next generation of them.

Making sure every New Zealander is prepared for the changing nature of work is one the biggest tasks facing this country.