What Is the Solution to the Widening Skills Gap?
The ability to recruit skilled, competent staff is what separates a successful company from its ailing competitors. Nevertheless, countries all over the world currently face an ever-increasing skills gap that impedes numerous sectors. With industries poised for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we look at the impact of shrinking talent pools, and what we can do about it.
Analysts estimate that by 2022, 133 million new jobs will be created.
The World Economic Forum suggests that rapid advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and emerging technologies will change the very nature of many jobs, culminating in a new division of labor between machines, algorithms, and humans. Automation will increasingly eliminate the need for humans to undertake mundane, repetitive, and dangerous tasks, freeing up employees for more “human” tasks.
Experts predict that there will be increasing demand for workers with technical skills, like app development and programming, alongside other competencies that computers cannot easily master, such as negotiating, problem solving, and creative thinking. Up to 375 million workers globally are predicted to transition to new occupations because technological advancements will render their current role obsolete. The pace of change is faster than ever before, with no signs of slowing anytime soon. AI, digital disruption, and the automation of jobs are creating fundamental changes in workplaces the world over.
According to an exploratory 2019 study by SHRM, 64 percent of employers reported being affected by a skills gap.
This represented a 12 percent increase on findings of the previous year. More than 75 percent of employers reported that during the preceding 12 months, their organization had up to 500 unfilled roles, with respondents citing a lack of current employees with the requisite skills and an inability to reach qualified candidates as the main difficulties.
An obvious place to start in terms of closing the skills gap is the education system.
Whereas blue-collar jobs were once seen as a solid career path, blue-collar industry has fallen out of favor over the years. A recent survey by Deloitte revealed that less than 30 percent of parents would encourage their child to pursue a career in the manufacturing industry, despite the fact that many blue-collar workers earn significantly more than their white-collar counterparts.
According to Gartner, 58 percent of the US workforce will need to acquire new skills.
Research reveals a 10 percent year-over-year increase in the total number of skills required to get a single job done since 2017. Emerging skills gaps created by digital disruption have accelerated still further as a result of Covid-19.
There are early indicators of a change in attitudes among employers, however. Alison Smith, director of human resources for Gartner, points out that while many organizations traditionally focused on talent acquisition to get the skills they needed, the Covid-19 pandemic prompted 74 percent of companies to place a freeze on hiring. In today’s environment, she explains, hiring is still not possible for many organizations, and as a result, companies are identifying current employees whose skills align with those in demand, utilizing training to close the gaps.
Investing in existing staff and helping them to acquire the skills they need to progress in highly skilled roles is an aspect that many employers have traditionally neglected. Far too many employers have underestimated the capabilities, knowledge, and skills of their current employees.
Another common problem is the inability to identify the most appropriate training route to upgrade staff skills. Employers often look to traditional training methods, such as college courses, to help employees develop new skills, but in times of rapid change, there may be more appropriate channels, such as apprenticeships, mentoring, or company-sponsored workshops.
All of these problems are further compounded by a lack of forward thinking from many HR leaders in terms of the future requirements of the business.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, US unemployment reached a 50-year low.
In virtually every industrial arena, job openings outnumbered qualified applicants, a situation that is predicted to get significantly worse in years to come. According to statistics from the Korn Ferry Institute, the existing talent shortage will peak in 2030, when 85.2 million open positions will go unfilled globally. Telecommunications, media, and, predictably, technology are expected to be the hardest-hit sectors, resulting in a $449.7 billion deficit in economic output.
It is vital that HR leaders be equipped to assess skill adjacencies among existing employees.
Employees and managers should be encouraged to maintain a portfolio of skills that is visible to their company’s human resources department, in order to provide HR leaders with a valuable overview of existing skills within their organization.
Traditional career frameworks relied on fairly rigid roles that remained largely unchanged for years, with employees moving up in a ladder-like trajectory. Today’s employers need to embrace flexible career progression, with employees moving not just upward but also vertically, exploring new career options and paths that are more fluid and less constrained in comparison with traditional roles.
