After the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Asia-Pacific region is at a turning point of transformation and recovery. A futuristic perspective on human-centric assembly has completely rewritten digital marketing strategies and capacity building approaches.
Bringing together officials, researchers, and industry professionals from APEC member economies to discuss innovative ideas and diverse topics on talent cultivation, the Workforce Development Agency (WDA), Ministry of Labor (MOL) hosted the “Paving the future of Digital Marketing Talent with Gender Lens: Women’s Economic Empowering, New Media Digital Upskilling (WEDU) Webinar” 24 June 2022. Particular attention is focused on officially launching the approaching WEDU training program implemented in August.
Experts and representatives from APEC member economies have been gathered to share common obstacles and explore synergies around innovation. APEC Human Resources Development Working Group (HRDWG) Lead Shepherd Prof. Dong Sun Park, APEC Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE) Chair Renee Graham, and APEC HRDWG Capacity Building Network (CBN) Coordinator Rosanna Urdaneta have delivered opening remarks, where all highlighted the continuous and forward-looking efforts from WDA to boost capacity building for addressing societal shift, responding to the challenges, and supporting everyone to seize the opportunities created by digital economy.
In addition, lecturers of the WEDU training program pointed out that based on the critical skills to stay relevant in digital marketing, the core values are to overcome stereotypes and integrate the gender perspective into strategies for understanding the needs of different community groups in their local area with a sense of trust.
The Director General of Workforce Development Agency (WDA), Mr. Tsai Meng Liang, mentioned the WEDU project aimed at strengthening human resources development through technical and vocational training, up-and re-skilling to enhance workers’ preparedness for the digital age. In the past 2 years, the WEDU project has achieved several outcomes with the “Training Package of Gender Power in Online Marketing”, which encouraged individuals to apply gender perspectives in marketing analysis and strategy, as well as to create diverse, inclusive, and sustainable business models.
Director General Tsai indicated that based on the mentioned training package, the training program would consider the cultural and gender differences in gender-role beliefs, capture lessons learnt from best practices and invest in diversity, inclusion, and equity. In terms of digital reskilling and upskilling, WDA will strengthen public-private partnership to combine resources for guiding trainees to obtain Certificates of iCAP and the ICDL digital marketing module.
WDA noted that while building resilience during the post-pandemic transition is characterized by uncertainty, there is still an emergent opportunity for highly innovative people to create the future. Combined with digital technology and gender perspective for activating marketing strategies, the practical training program focuses on not only the issue of brand identity or unique influence but also echoing the APEC theme "Open, Connect, Balance." WDA will continue to strengthen vocational training system to stay abreast of advancements, as well as share novel and practical cross-cutting skills with APEC economies.