Old Skills + Historic Turnover: A Recipe for a Failing Workforce

The Great Resignation is in full swing as a record number of employees have quit their jobs every month since the spring of 2021. These numbers are daunting. According to GartnerOpens a new window , some 37.4 million Americans are expected to call it quits in 2022 alone, while the Achievers Workforce Institute found that 52% of employees will seek new opportunities. It’s clearly time for employers to pay attention to what their employees need to feel and be successful.

Learning Beats Salary

What’s behind the exodus? PrudentialOpens a new window found that 80% of employees switching jobs are doing it because they’re concerned about their career advancement, and 72% want to switch jobs to get new skills. Simply put, employees want to learn and are willing to leave jobs when they feel that this will not be a part of their journey at that job. For many, gaining new competencies and moving up the corporate ladder is not the same, but they are closely related. 

Few companies can afford to lose 25-50% of their workforce as turnover is expensive and disruptive, especially at the current sweeping scale. The fact is that in the present climate, there may not be any replacements available which are reasons for organizations to be concerned.

2x Skill Development + 94% Better Retention

Businesses with learning and development built into their operations have less to worry about. A CeridianOpens a new window survey found that 30% of employees won’t leave a company that offers growth opportunities, and 43% would take a new job at the company if they learned new skills, even without a raise. 

The shelf life of skills, or the amount of time tech skills are relevant, is now down to two years. Educational institutions can’t keep up with hot and popular roles like data scientists, especially as data science roles are growing faster, at a rate of 295%, which is too fast for the industry to collectively train data scientists.

Ceridian’s research also found that 77% of employees said they wanted more learning opportunities, but just 40% were getting those opportunities. Further complicating matters, they have to be the right kind of learning opportunities — it’s not enough to just throw out some online courses. Ceridian makes a case for companies to offer not only specific job-related skills but also company-wide training that includes soft skills. These soft skills would make an individual a better leader or can teach them how to think and learn in new ways to perpetually adapt to the needs of their respective industries and markets. 

With the shift to digital workplaces in recent years and the rapid rise in automation, employers and employees don’t always know what skills they should learn. There’s a real challenge in digital adoption or teaching employees when, how, and why to best utilize these tools for maximum productivity and innovation gains. Companies must understand skill gaps and then implement the right intensive skill-building programs through various methods to make learning new technologies more accessible and appealing.

See More: The Need for Reskilling and Upskilling in the Era of the Pandemic

Traditional Ways of Training Don’t Cut It

There’s an abundance of tools and services on the market that can help organizations meet specific needs, but how do you decide what should be included, when training should be delivered, or how to structure professional development opportunities that work best for employees and the organization? Do you allow employees time in their work day for classes? Do you pay for courses? The questions and options are overwhelming. 

To get started, companies should consider the following.

• Make learning easy to access and on-the-job: All learning opportunities should be easy to access. Today’s technologies make the traditional in-person training approach seem obsolete. It’s possible for upskilling and reskilling to fit seamlessly into one’s day, maximizing efficiency and minimizing stress.

• Invest in the broader employee experience: Companies spend millions of dollars on customer experience, but some may prioritize the wrong things when it comes to employees. Rather than supplying pathways to get more out of their career, money is spent on short-term “perks” that make the workplace more comfortable or the office more appealing. Now that employees routinely work from home and place a premium on their time and interests, organizations have to construct a new type of employee experience, an experience that emphasizes the development of skills.

• Identify the skills your organization needs sooner rather than later: From soft skills to sales skills, the half-life of skills is in decline. Based on your long-term strategic plan, decide on the five skills your business needs and who needs them. Once you hone in on the “must haves,” it becomes far easier to tailor your programs according to the outcomes the business seeks.

• Map the road for your future workforce: Your organization needs to build skills intentionally, ideally using the three C’s: context, cohorts and coordination. What is your plan for coordinating and guiding learning initiatives so everyone is engaged and learning happens together? What contextual practice and hands-on application will be necessary to ensure job readiness?

• Listen closely to employees: Even the best management teams miss the mark from time to time. For any professional development program to be successful, it must be based on what employees’ needs are, as well as delivered in a manner that works for them. Otherwise, employees may put in only minimal effort if they choose to participate at all.

• Meet employees’ individual growth needs: Programs should be flexible enough to meet the skill-building needs not just of a cohort but also of one-off employees. Each employee should have access to a marketplace of programs that keep them learning without waiting for the next “scheduled” group academy to begin. With such a marketplace, skill development can be customized based on an individual’s role and interests while still enabling them to progress through a clearly defined program with their colleagues.

• Build learning into everything you do: The more training programs become part of employee systems in addition to part of the corporate culture, the more normalized learning becomes. It breeds healthy curiosity and enables employees to feel like there is a safe, supportive space for engaging in upskilling and reskilling. They invest their time and attention in return.

Looking Ahead

Today, companies have a unique opportunity to create a sort of one-stop learning shop where employees move smoothly through their employment journeys, gaining the next new skills as they do their jobs. Companies now have tools to create personalized, team-learning pathways and the tools to deploy skill-building programs tailored to their strategies. They can launch department-specific and role-specific, on-demand skill-building programs; or offer one-off program access to boot camps and certificates for individuals. The investments and spends can be fully tracked and measured against business goals. Never before has there been such flexibility or value in creating professional development programs, and advances are coming at a time of true need. At Learn In, we believe that companies need to establish internal Talent Academies that connect career pathways with clearly sequenced programs that are collaborative and practical, along with all the support, including the right funding, time to learn and coach. It’s the basis of the platform we’re expanding.

To prevent a future talent drain and move organizations forward, now is the time to invest in employees with rich professional development experiences. The rewards will be well worth it.

What steps have you taken to make your training programs more effective? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

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