Richard Donkin has been a Financial Times columnist on work and careers for ten years and also contributes a monthly column to Human Resources Magazine. His career at the FT began in 1987 and for a number of years he had an investigative brief, covering such stories as the closure of BCCI (for which the team won the Reporter of the Year award in the British Press Awards), the fraud at Ferranti and the arms to Iraq affair. He started his journalist career in the UK provincial press, and in 1986 was awarded Provincial Journalist of the Year together with colleague Tony Watson.

He is the author of Blood, Sweat and Tears, the evolution of work. He undertakes regular, speaking, report-writing and consultancy work and he has also completed a series of travel-writing assignments, including a 6,000 mile voyage around Cape Horn in the 1997 BT Global Challenge Round the World yacht race.

Born and educated in Yorkshire, he now lives in Surrey, England with his wife and three children. A Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in the UK, he is a keen walker, sailor and fisherman and is a Trustee of Earthwatch, the international environmental charity.

 Earlier this year Richard chaired a discussion panel on Vedior’s exclusive research concerning the UK skills shortages problem entitled Is the UK up to the job?
Here he reflects to Jennifer Arcuni and Sarah Woodward on how the world of work is changing.

“When I was a young man the gap year simply didn’t exist. Now it is an expectation. It is not an idea introduced by government, but one that has caught on by itself. And in many instances it is an alternative rather than an add-on to further education. For so many young people landing that first job is a huge challenge, largely because so many are simply over-qualified. Ironically, at the moment it is increasingly difficult to get in on the bottom rung.

Within the UK we have moved in terms of flexibility – not perhaps ahead but certainly differently from the rest of Europe. Many European countries are trying to come to terms with the target set by the Lisbon agenda, but privately they already recognise they are not going to meet it.

Many of the suggestions coming out of the EU are targeted principally at youth unemployment. While this is currently a serious issue, especially in southern Europe, if you look to the future and compare the anticipated number of jobs to be created versus the number of young people coming into the job market, there is a serious shortfall. Many managers have not yet grasped the fact that in years to come there will be fewer young recruits.

In a world of limited resources, whether that be talent or skills, we need joined up-thinking. The commoditisation of employment must be seen as a retrograde step for society. A structural re-adjustment of labour markets, in terms of attitudes as much as any other aspects, is long overdue. The issue of labelling/pigeon-holing/stereotyping of workers should be long gone. "