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careers employee engagement
steps to hiring, training and retaining top SME talent
There are two ways to interpret the latest employment data from the Office for National Statistics. Record job vacancies show that UK businesses are bouncing back from the impact of Covid-19. They also suggest what seems to be an acute talent shortage, highlighting how the pandemic continues to cast a long shadow over our working lives.
capabilities, but each business has different requirements, and therefore different skills gaps. For some, it’s advanced skills like computer programming and photoshop design, but for others it might be as simple as getting a website set up or even just sharpening up on Excel spreadsheets. Conducting a skills audit will help to identify the existing strengths and weaknesses of both you and your team – which is crucial in identifying how to proceed.
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Target growth opportunities – following an audit, take a forward-looking approach to figure out what the growth potential of any new capabilities will be for the business. If it’s social media marketing, try to establish where your potential customers are online, and which channels you can use to target them. We know from more than 130,000 businesses who accessed Vodafone V-Hub support over the past 12 months that growing a business online and attracting new customers are popular topics – hardly a surprise given the huge potential for growth that these skills bring.
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WORDS: BY ANDREW STEVENS, HEAD OF UK SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS, VODAFONE
SME leaders need to be a lot smarter about attracting and retaining talent and building the skills that will drive their business forward. Here are seven suggestions for shoring up skills gaps and prioritising top talent this year. 22
SME magazine
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Audit your existing skills – the first step is to take stock of the skills you do have, and the ones you think you might need. Today’s digital-first business environment has introduced new demands on small businesses to develop their digital
Upskill internally… – once you’ve got a good idea of what to focus on and why, it’s then a case of identifying how best to develop those capabilities. The first option is upskilling, both yourself and your team. But it’s clear that, whatever the requirements are, a lot of business owners don’t know where to start. The good news is that there is an abundance of courses and resources available online to kickstart the upskilling journey, both from the government and also from sites like Udemy and our very own V-Hub small business support website. Training doesn’t need to break the bank, either – we launched our business.connected programme alongside Enterprise Nation to provide free skills training to 150,000 SMEs, and there’s still plenty of time to take advantage of courses from the likes of Enterprise Nation, Samsung and Cisco. www.smeweb.com
