The need for reskilling and upskilling in the working environment has been at the forefront of many HR conversations and employee reskilling especially is likely to require considerable investments in the upcoming years. While keeping up with changing times has always been a necessary consideration regardless of the industry, the rapid upsurge of technology recently has really highlighted the need for reskilling programs in order to understand how to do a job you might have been doing for years already, albeit in much more complex ways now. PR Newswire recently reported on a study by PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra that found that 9 out of 10 HR leaders believed that employee reskilling would be necessary for 50 percent of their workforce. Despite this high percentage and strong belief, however, only 7 percent of them reported existing investments in reskilling programs.
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The Pressing Concerns over Employee Reskilling
The numbers are unsurprising—we know the need for reskilling and upskilling in the working environment is an urgent one but we also know that investments in the field will be slow to come. On the surface, the problem looks easy enough to solve with a few training courses or another few rounds of firing and rehiring to find the right talent for the evolving job roles. Unfortunately, the problem is a little more complex than it first appears.
Training programs are more easily doable when you know exactly which skills to target and how to predict the next stage of talent requirements that will be soon to come. The prediction is hard enough but finding the resources and identifying the right candidates for such training can also prove to be quite a challenge. Many companies hold back from training their workforce due to the fear of wasting investments in candidates who will leave the company soon enough and take the investments with them. Selecting the right candidates and going through the elaborate processes of getting them ready for the future of their role can seem like a waste of resources and if you don’t want to put all your money on one candidate, then the training budget has to be substantially bigger to accommodate the entire team that needs to evolve.
On the other hand, you could consider leaving the reskilling programs to the employees to handle for themselves and hope that the talent acquisition leaders hire well when the time arises for more workers with a more diverse set of skills, but that might be difficult as well if the entire workforce is struggling to keep up with the shifting markets that demand a wider array of capabilities. According to Statista, there were 8.79 million unfilled job openings in the U.S. at the end of November 2023, and the number of unemployed stood at 6.29. These were good numbers considering that the 1.4 unfilled positions per job seeker were actually an improvement with the labor and demand slowly balancing out. This narrowing gap depicts a positive trend but it may not last in the long run as workers start to fall behind in terms of the new requirements and qualifications necessary for their job role.
Talent shortage and Leadership Skill Gaps
Companies considering rehiring for roles instead of employee reskilling need to consider the fact that no matter how quickly they hire, they might always be slightly outpaced by the shifting trends of the industry. While a new batch of employees come in to serve the company well for a few years, it is likely they will need reskilling programs too or require another hiring drive instead. The cycle will likely be a cumbersome one. When employees stop seeing any opportunity for upward mobility in the organization as they watch their seniors and colleagues get replaced, they will likely leave voluntarily in favor of a better opportunity elsewhere. This will only leave companies more exposed and vulnerable to falling behind on the times.
The lack of stability in the workforce can also be reflected in the leadership. With no trained employees to be promoted to senior roles, you could face a leadership skill gap as well. Even the leaders of the organization will have to invest energy in reskilling to understand the full scope of the work that is done at the organization and the gaps that are present in their workforce. Employee reskilling programs have to be just as mindful of them as they are of employees.
The need for reskilling and upskilling in the working environment will only grow more important with time. A report by Go Globe posits that by 2026, up to 1.4 million workers will need reskilling and 35 percent might need up to 6 months of training while 10 percent it could require additional skills training for over a year. As scary as these numbers are, it may not require quite as much time to be invested in the process in reality, especially if you start sooner rather than later. The process of employee reskilling will take some time and energy to plan out first—What do your employees need and what skills will be relevant to your company in five years? Answering this question will probably give you some direction on how to begin planning ahead.
The reality is that not all of the reskilling has to be done in one go. By starting with small measures and being consistent, you can ensure your workforce stays up to date on the latest developments and familiarizes themselves with every necessary technological advancement relevant to your business and its specific roles. The World Economic Forum reports that investment in reskilling and upskilling the global workforce could result in a $6.5 trillion boost to the GDP by 2030, signaling the overarching impacts that reskilling can have the sooner we get started working on it.