Digitization, inflation, Pandemic and geopolitical conflicts have redefined the assets of global economies and the world of work and, consequently, the priorities of workers, who are increasingly focused on finding a job that satisfies them, fulfills their ambitions and needs and is aligned with their core values. All these changes have given rise to phenomena such as the Great Resignation, the large and gradual increase in resignations, but also to phenomena such as Talent e Skill shortage, a talent and skills gap that companies need more than ever to fill.
1. What are Talent and Skill shortage
Talent and Skill shortage are two real alarm bells for companies, but also two sides of the same coin. Both, in fact, represent two shortcomings: on the one hand, the Talent shortage is «A shortage of highly qualified talent in a particular sector or area, a situation in which a 'mismatch' arises due to a high demand for professionals that the labor market cannot respond to with an adequate number of candidates»; dall’altro, lo Skill shortage ovvero «The lack of technical and personal skills suitable for a new job position».
In both cases, Talent and Skill shortage have commonalities: they represent a gap that companies fail to fill, an inability or great difficulty in filling job vacancies or finding talent with the right skills.
Notably, these two phenomena would also seem to have in common the areas in which shortages register higher levels, namely:
📌 Sales & Marketing
📌 Manufacturing and production sector.
📌 Customers and Front-Office
In these areas, according to the "Employment Outlook Survey” di ManpowerGroup, ben il 75% dei datori di lavoro dichiara di non riuscire a trovare personale. A ciò va ad aggiungersi non solo la mancanza di competenze tecniche, ma anche quella di competenze ‘soft’ quali:
📌 Reliability and self-discipline: Be able to independently set priorities and goals, plan and be able to organize their work and bring results even from a distance;
📌 Resilience and adaptability: ability to adapt to changing contexts, be able to work on new assignments and with people with different viewpoints than one's own;
📌 Reasoning and problem solving: Be able to provide the best possible response to new and critical situations, keeping calm and responding to a situation rationally;
📌 Creativity and originality: be able to produce a range of possible divergent solutions to a given problem that does not involve a single correct answer;
📌 Critical thinking and analysis To know how to acquire, organize and repurpose data and information from different sources.
2. What are the causes and risks
Based on this, we can see how Talent and Skill shortage to date represent for companies a threat and a challenge that human resources departments face every day in order not to incur consequences that, inevitably, negatively affect their organization and, in the long run, the entire market.
In fact, it is estimated that in the next 5 years the percentage of companies that fail to find talent with the right skills will rise from the current 43 percent to an estimated 87 percent, rising to leave more than 85 million jobs unfilled by 2030.
But how did it come to this? First and foremost, the Pandemic, forced time spent at home and new hybrid work arrangements have helped redefine the priorities of today's workers: tired of lugging around a sense of dissatisfaction related to their careers, many employees have resigned, choosing to derive fulfillment elsewhere, in places that better meet their needs and allow them to finally realize their ambitions and themselves because they are more akin to their core values.
In addition, many employees resign to redefine their work-life balance, intending to give more space and importance to their private lives, which are often sidelined to cope with work rhythms that do not allow them enough, as opposed to freelancing or smart working.
Individual frustration, coupled with inflation, statistical and increasingly low or insufficient wages to cover rising living costs, have been accompanied and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which has helped to affect supply chains by increasing the uncertainty of the economic outlook.
Doubts, frustrations, and fear are growing, but not the salary availability and confidence toward the future, especially of the younger Generation Z, which has led potential candidates from companies to be increasingly unprepared for the world of work.
Consequently, however, companies see the possibility becoming apparent that their growth will be interrupted, that development and technological innovation will be curbed, and that, in the long run, all of this will negatively impact the market and society itself, generating a domino effect that starting with the disruption of supply chains, will see work schedules and workloads increase and multiple businesses close their doors.
According to the study "The skillful corporation" by McKinsey, 53% of organizations believe that one of the places to start to turn things around is first to put in place employee reskilling initiatives.
In fact, investing in the training of the latter through the establishment of ad hoc professionalizing courses, if not a full-fledged corporate Academy whenever possible, can be a benefit that recognizes value to the individual by supporting him or her in his or her work career and in the achievement of his or her goals, allowing organizations to also respond to their own need to secure the skills needed for the future.
Reskilling also serves a dual purpose: foster internal mobility of employees and improve retention because, through the proposed pathways to increase, upgrade or retrain skills, the company communicates to them that it cares about their growth.
It also leads to reduced recruiting and onboarding costs in the long run.
To bridge the gaps, an extremely important step is also redefine upstream HR strategy starting from active and continuous listening to workers' needs, adopting a people-centric approach and building a Employer Value Proposition as data-driven as possible that is accompanied by structured strategies of Employer Branding strategy and Talent Acquisition.
It is essential, therefore, that recruiting processes focus on the human capital of the company, so that it can implement a Employee Life Cycle that allows employees to have a positive experience throughout the employment relationship and based on the data, be able to offer an increasingly personalized offering to potential talent.
