Nearly half (46 percent) of U.S. executives at large companies are concerned that they won’t have the skills they need in the next one to two years, according to new research released by Accenture. The Accenture 2013 Skills and Employment Trends Survey: Perspectives on Training surveyed 400 executives to assess hiring, staffing, and training strategies.
The study found that “skills gaps—the disparity between the skills companies need to drive growth and innovation versus the skills that actually exist within their organizations and in the marketplace—are more prevalent across most industries,“ explains Accenture in the Outlook article, “Do You Have the Skills to Compete?”
For those executives who have or are anticipating a skills shortage, the biggest demand is
- IT skills (44 percent)
- engineering (36 percent)
- R&D (29 percent)
- sales (29 percent).
These skills are particularly in demand among manufacturers.
Effects on hiring and talent management practices
When looking at hiring overall, the retail, transportation, telecommunications, and utilities industries are most in need of leadership, communications, people management and project management skills.
Overall, nearly one-third (31 percent) of executives surveyed anticipate increasing their workforce over the next one to two years, while 62 percent expect their hiring to remain the same. Among those who have or anticipate a skills shortage, 41 percent said it is because they can’t attract candidates with the skills they need to their industry, 38 percent would hire more people if they were getting qualified candidates, 26 percent can’t pay what candidates want and 19 percent didn’t anticipate the skills they would need.
“The mismatch of skills needed and skills available is forcing organizations to rethink everything from how they define jobs to how they mine their organizations for hidden talent to how they recruit and evaluate candidates,” says Katherine Lavelle, managing director of Accenture Talent & Organization, North America.
“Companies are increasingly looking outside their industries for potential candidates, and they are evaluating broader generalist skill sets and competencies so that they can quickly build on these to develop more specific skills for a job,” adds Lavelle.
Increases in training investment
On a positive note, 51 percent of respondents report that their companies expect to increase investments in training over the next two years, and 35 percent of executives whose companies are facing a skills shortage admitted that they have not invested enough in training in the past.
“Executives are aware that they need to invest more in their people’s ongoing training so that workforces will have the skills their companies will need in the coming years.” says David Smith, senior managing director of Accenture Talent & Organization. “Developing more effective and targeted training programs is a critical element in improving the skills of the workforce,” writes Smith in the Outlook article.
While nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of executives identified training as one of the top ways for employees to develop new skills, only 52 percent of workers employed by the companies surveyed currently receive company-provided, formal training. By comparison, a 2011 Accenture survey found that only 21 percent of U.S. workers said they received company-provided formal training between 2006 and 2011.
And as executives explore and discuss the current skills gap and future skills needs, they are continuing to use new methods of delivering training to employees. The survey found that 42 percent use mobile delivery for training, 35 percent use social media, 27 percent use massive open online courses (MOOCs), and 13 percent use gamification.
Advice for addressing skills gaps
Accenture has identified some key strategies for companies tackling the skills gap:
- Find a balance between formal and informal learning. As digital technology blurs the boundaries between formal and informal learning, companies should consider ways to strike a balance between the two and help ensure that they work in tandem.
- Embrace new ways to develop skills. Recent developments are helping training become more relevant, such as social media tools that facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, gamification that immerses employees in virtual scenarios, and mobile training delivery that enables earning to take place anytime and anywhere.
- Expand your candidate pool. Companies should consider dropping the notion of finding the “perfect” candidate based on a list of specific skills, education, or experience. Instead, they could look for candidates with more generalist skills that can easily be developed to perform the job.
- Screen talent based on newly emerging data sources. Exploit new data sources as part of the effort to get fuller and more predictive insights into future performance. Some websites offer samples of a candidate's work, assessments that gauge a person's cultural fit and motivations, or social media contributions that can reveal their interests.
- Invest earlier in the talent supply chain. Leading companies are partnering with colleges and universities to review and revise curricula so relevant skills are acquired as part of their programs. Some companies are even setting up open access training programs to ensure that more people have the skills they need in specific regions.
Learn more at www.accenture.com/SkillsGap.
