According to a survey, 87% of organisations say they either have a current skills gap or will be faced with one in the next five years. Many businesses are now utilising a variety of strategies to fill gaps as quickly as possible as skill shortages.
Companies are seeing a steep change in the workforce capabilities they need to succeed and develop in order to stay on par or even surpass their competitors. As technologies and business models continue to evolve and transform rather quickly, businesses are left with no other option but to find professionals to fill the gaps of skills their current team don’t fulfil.
What is a skills gap?
The term “skills gap” describes the discrepancy between the abilities that employees actually present and the skills that employers anticipate they will have. It is difficult for companies to fill vacant positions as a result of this mismatch.
Approximately 2 in 5 UK employees are working in a role that they don’t have the right qualifications for, that’s around 11.28 million people. This statistic highlights the effect of hiring employees who don’t present the right skills for the job role. Entail running into issues further on down the line. A skills gap isn’t necessarily present as soon as you hire someone, as changes to technologies can be hard to keep up with. Unfortunately, it is common that those who are underqualified to begin with don’t have the time to receive the training they need to be able to keep up with faced paced changes in their industry.
How to address a skills gap in your company?
According to reports, UK businesses spend £4.4 billion yearly on strategies to overcome their talent gaps, a large portion of which goes on recruiting initiatives. There are a few ways you can achieve reducing skills gaps in the workplace.
The first is starting from within, look at the employees you currently have in your team and analyse if any of them would be suitable and adapt well to additional training to fill that gap. While the majority of your staff will likely not have the necessary skill set, some will at least be aware of its duties, and with them already present in the workplace they will already be aware of company culture and policies.
Secondly, you can hire outside of your organisation to fill that skill gap, which is where we come in. Employing consultants or rotating individuals into temporary positions rather than employing can help businesses in highly uncertain circumstances satisfy their skill demands more rapidly. Organizations may decide to invest in growing talent within the company instead of sourcing in order to fulfil the demands of new trends that are likely to stick around.
How can ReedPS help?
We are an experienced and expert team, with a wealth of programme and technical experience. From project inception through to delivery, we are here to ensure that your programmes and projects are supported by the right people using best practices and a problem-solving approach to deliver faster time-to-value. If you want to know how we can help source expert consultants to fill your skills gap, contact us today.
