How to Bridge the Widening Skills Gap in Organizations Effectively

If companies want to emerge stronger from the current crisis, they need to consider reskilling their workforces immediately. This is the right time to reskill and upskill employees to continue staying relevant in the post-pandemic era.

In the technology-driven, fast-paced corporate world of today, bolstering skills is imperative for the sustainability of businesses. Companies and industries across the world are plagued by skill gaps in the workforce, especially at a time when digital innovations continually and rapidly alter the demand for skills in the future.

It is natural for organizations to feel overwhelmed considering the sheer scale and complexity of continuously reskilling their workers. More importantly, it is not just about cultivating technological skills, rather it is about acquiring a whole gamut of skills -- from the creative to the complex cognitive capabilities that the future workforce will require.

At the beginning of 2020, the World Economic Forum too acknowledged the need for reskilling and upskilling when it launched The Reskilling Revolution Platform. The initiative aimed to involve multiple stakeholders to future-proof workers from technological change and help economies by providing new skills to the workforce.

In fact, the need for bridging skill gaps is even more relevant today given COVID-19’s impact on the business world. It is crucial now for organizations to help their employees adapt to skills and roles that are suitable for the post-pandemic ways of working to build a resilient workforce. While the critical skills that the workforce of any particular organization requires is dependent on the industry, geography and other variables, there are some skills that are commonly relevant in almost all sectors.

The World Economic Forum’s 2016 The Future of Jobs report had listed core work-related skills such as complex problem solving, active learning and cognitive flexibility as increasingly important to all sectors in the near future. Four years later, these skills remain essential, becoming even more significant in the pandemic-stricken world of work.

Moreover, skills are essential for survival not only for workers, but for the organizations that employ them as well. Therefore, the onus of bridging the skill gap effectively is as much on organizations as it is on individuals.

One way for businesses across industries, sectors and countries to eradicate skill gaps is to provide training and upskilling opportunities to their workforce in a continuous manner. From new recruits to the veterans of the company, each employee needs to constantly update his/her skills -- both digital and otherwise – that can support the overall business growth and success.

One of the most critical ways of bridging skill gaps and enhancing employee training programs is by subscribing to the numerous off-the-shelf courses that are readily available in the market today. However, it is important to choose the ones that fit the organization’s requirement as per their business goals and objectives.

Some of the prevalent content that aids skilling is bite-sized learning that can be easily consumed and retained by today’s time-deprived millennial workforce. This kind of content helps them stay involved while achieving optimum learning outcomes. Courses that promote microlearning kill boredom and create more engagement with bite-sized content that is media-rich and in-sync with popular trends.

What also matters is for the courses to be in a format that drives maximum engagement. Today’s modern workforce wants training that is on-demand, informal and customized to their specific needs.

Learning on-the-go is another essential factor for modern day skilling courses which need to provide continuous performance support to teams. Learners should be able to access chunks of information at the point of their need, anytime, anywhere.

The Plethora Advantage

At Plethora, we champion continuous learning and the benefits that come with it, providing a vantage point for learning experiences to organizations who want to scale up and drive their business success.

Plethora’s content is sourced from the best providers in the world to help organizations provide meaningful training at each level. The courses span legion topics including leadership, HR, communications, customer service, IT, sales skills and more. Organizations can choose from the rich repertoire of courses and plans that Plethora offers.

Plethora Enterprise offers access to a limitless and growing collection of diverse content on competencies that employees need today and in the future, while Plethora Microlearning gives employees the added advantage of bite-sized content and reinforcement learning with hundreds of 1 minute and 10-minute videos for learning in the flow of work.

Perfect for small to medium businesses, the Plethora 7500 and Plethora 2400 plans offer a curated collection of 7500 and 2400 courses respectively, across technical, business, leadership, compliance and behavioral skills to get the workforce skilled when needed the most.

Takeaway

There couldn’t be a better time for companies to introspect and look within to explore skills gap which will allow them to make informed decisions on where upskilling is really needed. In terms of learning opportunities as well as training and development, Plethora has the experience to assist and help companies drive their business forward to success.