Solving the skills gap For the foreseeable future, the speed of change will continue to generate demand for talent that outstrips supply
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By Clinton Wingrove
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lose to 70 per cent of employers globally are struggling to find skilled workers, especially in high-demand areas like operations and logistics, manufacturing and production, IT, sales, and marketing, according to a study by ManpowerGroup. In that respect, 2021 is proving to be a great year. This year we have at least two new excuses for not having the talent we need – COVID-19 and digitisation. But, hang on! Wasn’t it around 1965 that Moore advised us that the speed of digitisation would keep doubling? Wasn’t it in the 80s that we first learned about the war for talent? Wasn’t it in the 90s that we learned about the importance of engagement and | october 2021
retaining top talent? Wasn’t it in the 00s that we were warned that a pandemic was likely? Seems like we had enough advance notice! And, guess what - things are unlikely to change for the better. For the foreseeable future, the speed of change will continue to generate demand for talent that outstrips supply. Only when the major global economies realise that continuous growth is not sustainable will that change and I wouldn’t even bet your money on that happening soon! But, seriously, whilst there are clearly many specialist skills that do take years to acquire and master, most of the shortages are for
skills that can be developed in-house, on-the-job, and often quickly. As with most business problems, we need to focus our attention on (a) the real issue and (b) what we can control. We simply have not taken skill development seriously enough. Staff development of all forms in many organisations is still spoken about as a priority and treated like a nice-to-do! We plough money into short-term hot topics such as “Diversity and Inclusion” and “How to work remotely” but fail to treat development as a strategic competitive advantage. If we are going to take the inevitable talent shortages seriously, there are four significant opportunities.
