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This chapter discusses the challenges and support structures of MENA refugee women in their workforce transitions after resettlement in the United States. With a growing number of displaced individuals worldwide, the United States will undoubtedly continue to welcome immigrants and refugees in the coming years. While women comprise half of this population, MENA women participate in the US workforce at a far lower rate than do men from MENA. However, there is limited research examining workforce transitions for MENA refugee women once resettled. The partnerships of community stakeholders, including the education sector, non-government organizations, refugee agencies, and employers, are responsible for facilitating MENA refugee women toward self-sufficiency. Implications and suggestions for future research involving MENA refugee women are provided.

Over the next 25 years, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations will increase at rates higher than those in any other professional field. The inevitable rise in career opportunities, and the multiplicative impact across technology in a wide range of fields, will continue to create gaps that can and should be filled by professionals with diverse skill sets. It is essential to increase equitable access to future available jobs for historically underserved populations, such as women with autism, as they possess skills and perspectives that offer different approaches to job tasks in STEM fields. Considering the intersectional barriers that women face in the workforce, we have written this chapter to bring much needed attention to the interventions that employers can and should enact to support the women of Generation A. We offer the FACES framework (Facilitation, Awareness, Connection, Exposure, Support) as a guidepost for companies and organizations that endeavor to support women with autism in professional preparation and on-the-job development. We corroborate our framework recommendations with labor market data that offers insight into future projections regarding STEM fields and the associated opportunities and careers.

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed significantly over the past few years, evolving into a collection of innovative tools that provide a competitive advantage to businesses. The acceptance and investment in AI are skyrocketing over the globe. The entry of AI in the workplace automates tasks and impacts making a timely decisions. At the same time, the workforce is not ready to welcome the new technology due to the skill gap. The organisation has to face many challenges in reskilling and convincing the workforce to incorporate AI in their work.

Purpose: With this study, the authors aim to analyse and highlight the introduction of AI in the organisation and the call for the reskilling of the workforce. To figure out what skills are most important for employees to learn to advance their careers.

Methodology: Given the deductive nature of the study, the researchers used secondary data collected and compiled from research papers, publications, websites, HR blogs, survey reports, etc. Research papers from reputed journals, reports of consultancies and agencies have been considered to synthesise the information and present it in a systematic manner and to derive the conclusion.

Findings: The findings indicate AI’s capabilities and applications have grown considerably, which shows the importance of AI in a growing number of fields, yet several hurdles need to be overcome, the most prominent one being the issues concerning upskilling the workforce for the future of AI. This study reveals the change in the perceived importance of the skills in the present and future times. Reskilling and upskilling the workforce and creating new talent to meet the changing employment demands is becoming increasingly important.

This chapter highlights the plight of refugees and the strategies and policies crafted by international agencies and non-governmental institutions in providing better access to education especially for refugee children. The chapter explores some of the key terminologies that distinguish refugees from asylum seekers and internally displaced person. The terminologies are significant as the opportunities and facilities handed out differ significantly depending on their status. The chapter then talks about some of the policies toward imparting education and the school- and system-level factors responsible for accessing education. The last section of the chapter summarizes the overview of various chapters that will feature in this volume, talking about cases and interventions from Malawi to Australia.

Despite many calls to strengthen connections between health systems and communities as a way to improve primary healthcare, little is known about how new collaborations can effectively alter service provision. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a health authority, municipal leaders and physicians worked together in the process of transforming primary healthcare.

A longitudinal qualitative case study was conducted to explore the processes of change at the regional level and within seven communities across Northern British Columbia (BC), Canada. Over three years, 239 interviews were conducted with physicians, municipal leaders, health authority clinicians and leaders and other health and social service providers. Interviews and contextual documents were analyzed and interpreted to articulate how ongoing transformation has occurred.

Four overall strategies with nine approaches were apparent. The strategies were partnering for innovation, keeping the focus on people in communities, taking advantage of opportunities for change and encouraging experimentation while managing risk. The strategies have bumped the existing system out of the status quo and are achieving transformation. Key components have been a commitment to a clear end-in-view, a focus on patients, families, and communities, and acting together over time.

This study illuminates how partnering for primary healthcare transformation is messy and complicated but can create a foundation for whole system change.

This monograph is an attempt to examine some of the changes which have occurred in the structure of the workforce in Australia during the 1970s. The study has the form of exploratory analysis of data extracted from official labour market statistics, and its aims are to consider three broad issues: the significance changes in the labour market may have for Australian society, and particularly for the people who constitute the workforce, actual or potential; the implications of those changes for social policy; and the appropriate research methods of identifying social and social welfare issues in economic activities.

A growing number of individuals with autism are graduating from high school and university to find a lack of reliable resources dedicated to assisting the transition from education to the world of work. This Generation A, with a population of 1.5 million people, will age into the workforce over the next decade. Despite federal-state programs, dedicated nonprofits, and highly publicized corporate hiring initiatives, the unemployment rate for individuals with autism remains above the national average. Corporations have started to recognize the untapped potential of the neurodivergent worker but struggled with sourcing talent and failed to develop practicable pipeline models across various industries that are open-sourced, easily replicated, scalable, and financially sustainable. A review of methods, programs, and paradigms that exist amid current statistics reveals the imperative for innovative ideas that can be executed by multiple stakeholders to affect both the work seekers and the job creators. A systems approach to developing talent pipelines is investigated as one possible solution as well as other new expeditions and collaborative, open-sourced concepts that hold promising statistics and anecdotal data about what could be the next iteration of workforce development in an increasingly neurodivergent world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference in attaining and maintaining employment between transition age youth (ages 19–22) with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs) completing and not completing vocational training.

A quantitative causal-comparative research design using existing data extracted from the National Longitudinal Transitional Study-2 (NLTS-2) via a restricted data use license issued by the National Center Special Education Research, Institution of Education Sciences, US Department of Education. One-way ANCOVA and multiple regression analysis with one independent variable and six control variables were used for the study.

The results showed there is a significant difference in employment status between transition age youth with EBDs completing vocational training as compared to non-completion of vocational training, controlling for gender, race, age, mental health services, academic achievement and prior work experience. Individuals who completed vocational training are more likely employed after two years, than those who had not completed vocational training.

The outcomes of the study showed that vocational training during the transitional period had a positive impact on outcomes such as employment status, participation in job skills programs and perceived preparedness for employment. These findings support the idea that vocational training during the secondary school period is an effective way to scaffold support for the transitional period. As a result, these findings justify the use of vocational training as part of the transitional preparation for students with emotional and behavioral disorders.

The aim of this paper is to identify and analyse workforce development challenges in the digital age by first, presenting these challenges and relationship between them, and then proposing a structural model that categorizes these challenges and proposes suggestions for managers to improve human resources practices and firm performance.

Fuzzy total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) is used as the methodology, which gives an interpretive structural model by presenting direct and transitive relationship between workforce development challenges and categorizes them under autonomous, dependent, independent and linkage groups.

In total, 13 different workforce development challenges are presented in this study. Results showed that lack of IT/digital skills has a critical role in workforce development in terms of affecting other challenges. Dependent group includes requirements for longer learning time and specialized training, lack of analytical thinking and dealing with complexity, and lack of interdisciplinary thinking and acting. On the other hand, lack of ability in decentralized decision-making and shortage of workforce with adequate skillset within the labour market have more macro-impacts on others. Most of the challenges located in the linkage group, which means that most of the challenges are interrelated with each other.

Originality of this paper is presenting a systematic structure for workforce development in Industry 4.0 that considers challenges systematically.