Last year, Congress passed a law enabling workers to get a skills grant to choose the training they need.

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Tools like LinkedIn have revolutionized the sourcing and recruiting industry, now enabling employers to find precisely the skills they need (Read more on how LinkedIn is Disrupting the Corporate Recruiting Market.).

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As part of the deal, HealthSouth adopted the nonprofit foundation next door, complete with a biomechanical lab for studying throwing motions and golf swings, and equipped with cadavers and synthetic body parts, enabling fellows to hone their surgical skills.

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Meanwhile, high-tech patient simulators, such as those at Brigham and Women's Hospital, are enabling doctors and nurses to hone their technical skills for difficult emergency procedures and boost teamwork under pressure.

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Under BEE laws, white-owned companies with an annual revenue of at least 5m rand are given ratings for enabling blacks to own shares, improve their skills within the company, move up the managerial ranks, and so on.

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Yet those culinary hours have compensations, enabling a middle-class girl to polish the traditional skills that help towards finding a suitable husband.

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As CMOs are inundated with news about how the world is changing at warp speed, the savvy CMOs are focused on developing the skills, knowledge, and competency that are enabling them to be pivotal leaders in the new world.

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