Episode: 727

Episode Title: The Recipe for a Skills Gap

What are the basic ingredients that create a skills gap? Let’s talk about it, coming up next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 727 show:

Welcome to The Perna Syndicate! What’s the recipe for a skills gap? Of course, there’s a lot that goes into it. But in a nutshell, society shifts. In response to cultural trends, new ideas, and advancing technologies, people start prioritizing different things. This leads to a demand for new and different products and services. So the change in what needs to be produced means a change in how the workforce operates to produce it. 

Complicating this scenario is a larger cultural shift away from hands-on work and toward “knowledge work.” People want and need these new products and services, but often don’t honor the labor force that produces them. So we have a bigger demand, PLUS a smaller number of people who are motivated to enter these careers. 

So basically, as society shifts, so too does the job market and the skill sets required to meet these changes. That’s the recipe for creating a skills gap, which a majority of companies are now facing. 

That’s why upskilling is such a vital part of success today. When companies fail to upskill their workforce, they will lack the skills to meet future or rising demands. A better way forward is to proactively invest in upskilling to avoid skills gaps, rather than respond to a gap that’s getting bigger by the day. 

And this means lifelong learning and development. In today’s workforce, none of us should ever think that we’ve arrived. Maybe it used to be possible, but society is now shifting far too quickly for that to ever be true again. 

Tomorrow: Should companies spend more on hiring new people or training the ones they’ve already got? It’s a question we’ll cover next time on The Perna Syndicate. See you then!