This article has been originally published at APMG
Technology is moving rapidly – so how do we keep up?
CEOs complain about the lack of employee’s essential skills
According to PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, four out of five CEOs complain about their employees lack of essential skills and identified this factor as a threat to growth. The problem has escalated over the past five years and is raised consistently across all regions: CEOs in Japan and Central/Eastern Europe are most worried (95% and 89%, respectively), whereas those in Italy (55%) and Turkey (45%) are the least anxious about it.
The skills shortage can restrict growth chiefly because it stifles innovation and raises workforce costs. It’s understandable that organizations are concentrating on reskilling. Given the right context, people can be highly adaptable, and an organization’s ability to harness that adaptability will be critical as the world of work evolves.
Employees are willing to learn
The good news is that employees are more than willing to reskill and upskill. According to a PwC global survey of more than 12,000 workers, employees are happy to spend two days per month on training to upgrade their digital skills. Digital skills have a short shelf life, so learning will need to be continuous and woven into the organizational culture.
Skills mismatches have a direct impact on a nation’s GDP, tax revenues and social safety net bill.
So, the OECD Skills Outlook 2019 aims to understand how policies (in particular those that affect skills development and use), can shape the outcomes of digital transformation and translate into more equally shared benefits among and within countries’ populations.
The Economist reports that as automation, AI, and new job models reconfigure the business world, lifelong learning has become accepted as an economic imperative.
