Skills Gaps: How to Overcome Them
In many businesses and organisations there are skills gaps that prevent them from performing at their optimum level and securing the type of success that they may wish to achieve.
These gaps can be at a national, organisational or individual level and we will explore a bit more about skills gaps and how companies can solve the problems that they bring.
“The Great Resignation”
The UK in particular is experiencing some of the worst skills gaps in recent memory, in large part due to European citizens leaving to return to mainland Europe. Another factor in causing the skills gap is what is being referred to as “The Great Resignation” of 2021/22 which has seen an unprecedented number of people, around 5%, leave the jobs they were previously settled in.
Academics like Professor Anthony Klotz who coined the phrase “The Great Resignation” have speculated that the large changes in the labour force have been as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic with people seeking a better life balance and changing their priorities for how they wish to live their lives going forward.
Some of the people who left their jobs in the Great Resignation put off tendering their resignations during lockdown as they were furloughed and it didn’t make sense to do anything at that stage.
That makes perfect sense from an employee perspective as they were being paid 80% of their normal salary not to go to work. It obviously caused major problems for their employers when they resigned at the end of furlough, as they suddenly had to not only open up their business again but simultaneously try to fill in the gaps that had suddenly appeared in their workforce without any kind of warning.
Another factor in the Great Resignation was that many employers were insisting on a return to the office and their workers had got used to working remotely. The remote work model has been proven to work well and in many cases increased productivity, so there are many workers who resent having to commute again and return to the office when their work is better at home.
Following the pandemic, there is now a significant percentage of employees who want to work remotely on a permanent basis. Many of them are also prepared to leave their current employment to make that happen. It is not as simple as just asking them to return to the office. Many employers are trying to think of incentives to entice them to return, including hybrid working models.
What is an Individual Skills Gap?
When we talk about a skills gap in the context of an individual, it tends to mean that they lack the abilities or proficiencies that are normally required to complete their job role to a high standard.
This can cause a real problem and often needs to be addressed by upskilling them or providing training opportunities that will teach them the abilities that they are currently lacking in. Insisting that employees tick every single box for their job roles can be counter-intuitive if they are managing to do the job with only 85% of the boxes ticked.
It depends on the individual and whether they are talented in other areas which can compensate for the ones where they are lacking. They may have excellent transferable skills in various different areas that more than make up for their deficiencies in a particular skill.
There are many factors that can contribute to personal skills gaps and these are a lack of experience, changes in job roles, a high level of employee churn or inadequate training. Even a poor recruitment process which failed to target those with the appropriate skills or a demonstrably poor education system in their area could be at fault. There is often no one single point of failure that is to blame but a combination of several of the factors mentioned above.
Company-Wide Skills Gaps
The concept of skills gaps can apply to companies just as readily as to employees and skills gap analysis needs to be undertaken in order to investigate just how large the gaps are on an organisational level.
A large part of the problems that organisations are experiencing is with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the need for vastly different skill sets than before. It can be difficult to find people with the requisite skills for interacting with the AI and analysing the output with any degree of reliability and purpose.
Where skills gaps exist in companies, there are a few solutions that they can look at in order to resolve the situation.
Recruit to Fill the Gap
The company can focus on the particular skills that they are lacking and target their recruitment process toward people who will meet the criteria that they need. This may find someone with a very particular and narrow skill set, though they may lack some of the other softer skills that may be valued at most organisations
Take on an Apprentice
Companies can take on apprentices and train them up to meet a particular job role within their organisation. This will allow the apprentice to learn directly through on the job training and be able to find out what is expected of them first-hand. This specific type of training can be an excellent move as the apprentice can be moulded to fit the role and their skills can be developed to fill the gap that the organisation currently has.
Upskill a Current Staff Member
Management can decide that a current staff member is an ideal candidate to upskill to the level that they need. They can organise training sessions for them in the appropriate subject areas and ensure that they learn what they need to in order to be of use in plugging the skills gap. Most employees are a known quantity already, so it should be relatively easy to choose someone who has the capacity to succeed at upskilling and who has a desire to succeed at a higher level in the company.
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