Looking at my resume up until this point, the employment system we have in place today would probably say I’m not ‘job-ready’, but the job descriptions I’ve had over the years are not an accurate reflection of my true ability. After all, I'm here now and I’m confident I will continue to develop the skills I need for the challenges ahead.
For too long that same system has relied on resumes and years of experience as the measure of someone’s abilities – and it’s not just something that happens in recruitment, it happens internally as well. Great people leave companies all the time because they’re not offered the chance to learn new skills or explore different areas that match their inherent potential.
At a time when technology is profoundly changing the world of work, an organisation’s ability to deploy the right skills, in the right place at the right time has become essential to their ongoing success, regardless of whether those skills were developed through a three-year degree, an online training course or transferred from a previous role in an unrelated sector. The real challenge is that many organisations lack a clear understanding of the skills they have within their workforce and the deficit against current and future requirements.
This lack of insight into the true skills profile of an organisation means people are deeply underutilised, despite being an organisation’s single greatest expense and most valuable asset.
Amidst the current rate of technological change, this challenge is exacerbated by a growing skills lag – a term we use to re-frame what others call the skills gap. We call it a skills ‘lag’ because it’s a continuous delay in the professional development of employees who aren’t receiving guidance on the skills they should be learning from leaders who lack a demand signal for the skills they need. It means the workforce capability of many organisations sits perpetually behind the cutting-edge, threatening their competitiveness and creating misalignment between individual career goals and organisational needs.
The way we see it, the skills of your employees are what underpins your success and understanding and growing them through a holistic approach is essential to ensuring it continues.
In my company, we call the process of addressing this critical workforce challenge ‘the 3 C’s’: clarity, capability and closure.
Clarity is understanding the skills your organisation needs both now and into the future, capability is identifying, assessing and validating your employees’ current skills, natural strengths and growth potential and lastly, closure. Once an organisation is armed with clear insight into the skills their workforce has and those they urgently need, closure is the most important part of the process; and there are two key ways to approach it.
The first is through skills-based hiring – a recruitment approach that takes a holistic view of each candidate to determine their suitability for a role. This might include looking at their existing skill set, both soft and technical, but also assessing their natural aptitude and learning potential, both of which are extremely important in an agile, future-focused organisation.
The second is motivating employees at scale to bridge the gap between the skills they currently have and the skills the organisation needs. Developing personalised professional development pathways that align individual career aspirations with company goals will keep your workforce ahead of the skills lag and ensure your organisation and your employees thrive.
This article was originally published in Indeed's 2024 report 'Skillfully Aligned: Closing the gap for a future-proofed workforce'.
To explore further insights on skills-based hiring download Indeed's Skillfully Aligned report.
