When employers think about the need to develop their workforce’s skills, they often frame it in terms of a five-year horizon rather than worrying about the next 12-18 months. If that approach worked before, these days it could be a recipe for failure.
The pandemic has supercharged the shift to a digital, remote-working world, creating momentum for sweeping technological change and rapidly evolving skill demands that likely won’t abate any time soon. We may well look back on this time as the start of a fourth industrial revolution.
Technology is evolving so quickly that a workforce’s current skills could be significantly out of date in a year. This isn’t a theoretical shift in the future — it’s happening right now.
Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and burgeoning demand for skills such as cybersecurity and data analysis are changing the nature of work and the skills needed to perform it. Companies are increasingly finding there just aren’t enough workers with the technical, analytical and soft skills that are now crucial to giving them a competitive edge.
As many as 375 million workers globally will need to change occupational categories by 2030 due to automation, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute study. In the area of cybersecurity alone, the number of unfilled positions rose to 4 million in 2019 from just under 3 million a year before, including 561,000 in North America, according to the 2019 (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study.
To take one industry example, health care firms increasingly see themselves as tech firms that just happen to be in the health care sector. One of their biggest emerging challenges is finding enough people who can use and manage the array of tech tools that are being integrated into health care.
For workers, that means thinking of their careers as a process of continuous learning rather than just a job. They can’t do that alone, though.
Employers need to be proactive by developing comprehensive strategies to identify which skills they need to stay competitive and how to acquire them, be it through hiring new talent or reskilling/upskilling their existing workforce.
A lot of employers are broadly aware of the challenge, but many lack clarity about how to implement a dynamic program that meets it.
Developing a skills strategy is now so fundamental to business success that it requires the full involvement of the C-suite. CEOs should work hand-in-glove with their HR heads to identify the candidate profiles they will need and to develop sophisticated sourcing strategies to acquire or grow the right talent.
They need to build a full picture of where they are today, where they need to be tomorrow, and a budget and strategy for getting there.
Some key questions this strategy should address:
- To what extent will remote working become permanent?
- What sort of disruptions could put the company’s value at risk?
- What strategic capabilities and skills are essential to gain and maintain a competitive advantage?
- Will your workforce achieve the demographic structure and mix to achieve your desired diversity?
- Are your people in the right roles?
Increasingly, the answers don’t lie in simply plucking graduates from four-year degree courses. The accelerated tech cycle means there is growing value in short-burst learning programs that train workers in skills that are directly applicable to their changing job roles and opportunities for advancement.
Retaining talent is no less important than acquiring it. As part of their strategy, companies should be analyzing their retention metrics to understand the factors that are motivating people to stay or pushing them to leave.
Increasingly, it’s not just about salary. The younger generation of workers wants to know their employer is investing in their skills acquisition through benefits such as development programs and tuition reimbursement.
Employers can take a more proactive role by working with high schools and colleges to help develop programs that build the skills of the future. They can align their internal learning and development efforts with degree programs and award college credits. They can offer college loan repayment programs to attract top talent or provide tuition assistance for certificates or degrees that meet their needs.
This is why apprenticeships are continuing to enjoy a U.S. renaissance, even amid the challenges of COVID-19. The University of Phoenix, for example, is working with tech education firm Woz U to offer a pathway to a degree to participants in their apprenticeship program. Their employer partners then help fund their acquisition of credits for a full college degree while they work.
As well as creating a reliable pipeline of essential talent, apprenticeships are a wonderful way to improve retention rates. Workers who have been through these programs tend to feel a high degree of loyalty to their employers because of the support they’ve been given to develop their skills and learning.
This is a lot for employers to think about and a lot to implement. The good news is there’s a rapidly growing ecosystem of third-party providers to support businesses’ efforts to build their talent pipeline.
And more of them are now offering one-stop solutions for training, reskilling, certifications and apprenticeship programs that can deliver the complete talent pipeline that companies need.
