Former US Labour Secretary Alexis Herman hit the nail on the head last week when she discussed what should be Bermuda’s imperatives for its workforce.

Ms Herman, who was Labour Secretary under US President Bill Clinton, said the challenges were investment in education and training, creating genuine workplace diversity and having a workable immigration policy.

Ms Herman would probable be the first to admit that none of these goals can be pursued in isolation. They are intricately linked.

On training and education, she said: “Training for training’s sake no longer works. It has to be tied to the jobs of the future and it has to be laser focused and it is too late to start thinking of starting this in high schools, it has to start much earlier — giving our young people the appreciation of what it is going to take in the future.”

The point she is making that if people are unprepared for the workforce when they leave school, it is too late. Rigorous standards and a commitment — as opposed to merely giving lip service — to excellence are key.

That is not to say that six-year-olds need to decide whether they want to be an underwriter or a hotel manager, but they need to be getting an education that gives them the foundation for success in a demanding career world.

Nowhere is the need for genuine workforce diversity greater than in Bermuda. With a multi-racial population and a clear wealth gap between whites and blacks, the need for diversity and equality of opportunity is greater. But it is also clear that you cannot expect to have genuine diversity if workers do not have the training and skills needed, and this is why there should be deep concern about public education. If the public education system, whose students are predominantly black, is failing, then it stands to reason that a large proportion of black workers will be disadvantaged once they reach the workplace, and that will be a disaster for diversity.

So getting education and training right is key to improving diversity and career advancement in the workplace. To be sure, there are other barriers as well, and employers and Government agencies like the Human Rights Commission and CURE must work together to show that the workplace is race and gender blind.

Only then can Bermuda deal with the third issue, which is Immigration. Ms Herman was right to say that Immigration procedures are transparent and well understood, and recent events notwithstanding, this is largely the case.

But the ideal is for Bermuda to be in a position where able Bermudians are in positions to fulfil their potential and to be able to take advantage of the extraordinary job opportunities that exist.

The reality is that Bermuda will always depend on non-Bermudian labour as much as a third of the available jobs. The goal must be to have Bermudians prepared for good jobs, and that’s only possible if they are well educated and do not face barriers to employment.

This newspaper reported that Ms Herman told a group from Somersfield Academy students of the importance of achieving an advanced degree because a high school certificate or a bachelor’s degree is no longer enough in the global workplace.

This is quite correct, and all the statistics show the links between educational attainment and higher wages and career advancement.

But what hope do students have of gaining a degree of any kind when they are products of an education system that struggles to graduate half of its students? Clearly improvements have to start in the schools, or the path that Ms Herman describes and rightly says is attainable will turn out to be a dead end.