Reskilling is a here and now solution to the talent shortage.
By Tierney McAfee
With the number of employees who are voluntarily quitting their jobs higher than ever, organizations are placing utmost importance on retaining current workers and reskilling them, or teaching new skills to help them transition into different roles within the same organization.
According to Tom Jewett, Vice President of NA RPO Operations at Allegis Global Solutions, a leading provider of global talent acquisition and workforce solutions, recruiters have a key role to play in the reskilling revolution that’s happening in the world of work today.
“Recruiters need to be repositioned from being tied to just the process of recruiting to being tied directly to the business messaging,” says Jewett. “Recruiters should have a pulse on the internal workforce and understand their motivations, frustrations, and challenges. They should also know when employees might leave; if they know this they can prepare a pipeline prior to departure.”
Jewett says recruiters can leverage technology to get data on why people want to stay, why people leave, and where they could be reskilled or repositioned.
“At the end of the day, recruiters should be shifting from being transactional to finding themselves in a career coaching role -one where they use insights gathered through technology and data, as well as relationships with employees, to continue filling roles via shifting internal talent and hiring external candidates where needed to be able to help organizations meet overall business goals,” Jewett says.
According to the Disruption Drives Reskilling and Upskilling study by Lighthouse Research & Advisory, on average, reskilling a current employee is half the cost of recruiting someone from outside the business. Not only that, but research from the Wharton School of Business shows that, on average, external hires cost 18 to 20 percent more and perform worse for the first two years on the job.
Jewett says many organizations are putting career transition services in place so that current employees can be redeployed when they are not satisfied in their current role. The 2018 Training Industry Report shows that the average training expenditures for large companies increased from $17 million in 2017 to $19.7 million in 2018.
“We are seeing greater emphasis and urgency placed on training and reskilling current employees,” Jewett says. “Companies realize and understand how valuable their current talent is and know they can’t afford to lose them in this current market, therefore they are focused on reskilling all types of workers to take on the next roles within the company.”
