Report
Platform-Led Upskilling
How Marketplace Platforms Can Transform Emerging Markets by Investing in Skills Development
How Marketplace Platforms Can Transform Emerging Markets by Investing in Skills Development
With the support of
Platform-led upskilling is the training that marketplace platforms provide to small-scale vendors and self-employed workers, even outside the scope of a conventional employer- employee relationship. It is a widespread and necessary part of doing business, especially in regions with significant skills gaps. Upskilling happens in three ways—via face-to-face or interpersonal interactions, online training, and in-workflow training moments—and the content includes various combinations of platform proficiencies (how to use the service), financial and digital literacies, vocation- specific skills, and soft skills.
Upskilling has the potential to strengthen the social contract between platforms and vendors/workers, and it brings platforms into the broader education landscape of the markets in which they operate. But platform-led upskilling is difficult and expensive; there’s a lot of work to be done to refine it as a craft and create sources of advantage for marketplace platforms. Mobilizing platform-led upskilling will involve platforms, governments, and the development sector in new knowledge exchanges and partnerships to create better livelihoods in the digital era.
Through research and interviews with platforms around the world, this study illustrates the ways that platforms are already teaching portable skills and provides calls to action for parties interested in fostering equitable and sustainable livelihoods in the digital era.
