“Build your skills, not your resume.”
– Sheryl Sandberg
The workplace is no longer carrying on with business as usual. New paradigms of business continuity, agility, upscaling, and new skills have radically evolved.
The ability to provide rapid response to challenging situations, change management and meet up with new business demands has become necessary in our ever-changing world. More so, with the implementation of new technologies.
For organisations to occupy an advantageous position, it is essential their employees are equipped with the latest and most relevant skill-set and technological know-how to make themselves and their organisations competitive. Having the right and appropriate skill set is now mandatory at all levels within the organisation.
The proper skill set leads to higher productivity and this in turn positively impacts the bottom line. With the increase in the number of evolving jobs, organisations require employees to have a broader educational experience, not necessarily in terms of academic qualifications but also in their intellectual and social exposure. HR’s responsibility is to find ways to deepen and communicate the same to the workforce such that new employees are given proper orientation at joining. Hence, they are mentally prepared to contribute significantly to the organisation.
As organisations recruit, they must deliberately close the skill gap that exists by asking some key questions:
- For future demands, what skill set is needed?
- What will future talent expect?
Having a workforce that lacks the necessary skill set to execute and deliver on the job severely affects the business and profitability; it leads to:
- Low productivity
- Bad Service
- Poor Quality
- Costly Mistakes
- Litigation from stakeholders
- Accidents and safety Risk
- Lost person-hours
- Increased customer dissatisfaction
Organisations can do the following to address the problem of skill deficiency;
- Skill audit/testing will serve as a benchmark to determine the current skill set of the employees within the organisations.
- Training and development to equip the employees
- Providing employees with the right environment and tools to develop themselves.
Today, skills management has become an indispensable element of an organisation’s performance. Employees are expected to possess a diversity of relevant skills and capabilities.
Conducting a skills audit is the first step to harnessing the best from your employees. This skills assessment is based on defining concrete functional and behavioural competencies, which serve as a critical driver for the assessment framework. At pcl. we have been able to work with organisations in various sectors and industries to assess their current staff capabilities and identify relevant skill gaps.
We understand that the workplace of yesterday, today and the future all have different dynamics. What was needed to survive yesterday is different from what we need to thrive today and in the future. Skills are evolving, and so must businesses, too, in terms of their people.
Written by:
Mayowa Oloyede
Senior Consultant
