Closing the Skills Gap
By Ray Mostogl, CEO of KEEN Partners
How can it be that Tasmanian employers often share their frustration with claims it’s difficult to find suitable employees - yet our unemployment rates, particularly amongst the under 25 age group is so high?
I hear concern from employers, across many sectors and from all sizes of business, and as an employer and with knowledge of the statistics, both statements are true. This widening of the gap with what employers are looking for and what employees can offer is not a recent event, it’s been getting wider for years.
It’s about to get more complicated.
What will the fallout from COVID-19 restrictions do to this gap? It’s likely there’ll be more employees for employers to choose from, but there will be less employers as well. Given those who recently lost work do have current work experience, they will probably occupy the front of the unemployment queue. That means those who were in the queue before COVID-19 will still be in the queue, but further back and could well be excused for becoming even more despondent about their prospects. Their self-confidence and self-esteem will potentially take another hit. This will not be good for our youth nor for our society. Low self-confidence and low self-esteem are a part of the resilience equation which separate out the workers who make their way into satisfying employment and those who drift in and out of employment.
While it’s easy to sit on one side of the “gap” and place blame on the other side, this will never reduce the size of the gap. As an employer it’s easy to cite poor work ethic, low literacy / numeracy skills, quality of education, unrealistically high expectations for career progression and so on. Potential employees bemoan the fact employers will only consider someone with experience, and around we go, but nothing changes.
How does society begin to close the gap?
We have to start by accepting we all have a role to play.
There needs to be acknowledgment that what “we” have always done isn’t working - either as employers recruiting, or in the preparation of employees. At the moment the onus is on “me” to change the things I can influence and trust the other half will do the same.
Helping someone without meaningful work experience to become employable requires both parties to be more accommodating to each other's needs.
Historically, bigger employers with deeper pockets had support systems to develop people before placing them into operational roles. They accepted the reality that they were training people for both their needs and the needs of the broader community. But today it seems to be ok to recruit-in employees prepared “by someone else” to remain viable.
When they had provided support, it came at both a cost and a loss of productivity for a period of time. But employers did this because it was a future investment. An inexperienced employee can have a significant and costly negative impact on quality and safety.
But more than the logic of quality and safety, the further upside which may have been overlooked in this employee development was the loyalty and reputation the employer earned by enabling the new employee to achieve outcomes they thought were beyond them. Even in today's environment, this reputation earns higher staff retention with lower turnover. The return will come, but not for a while.
“What if we train them and they leave? What if we don’t and they stay?”
So what could employers do to maintain productivity without the high resourcing investment?
Employers of all sizes, who can no longer spare the management and leadership attention to build up and develop the new starters, could outsource the task of developing a more capable workforce to a third party. Apprentices and trainees employed under the Group Training Organisation (GTO) model are a current example. There’s nothing preventing an employer from having their new employees be “work-readied” by the systems and structures of a GTO.
For many newer employees, particularly those who have not held regular work or have come from a different sector, they have a range of vulnerabilities which without close support, could make fitting in to a new workplace overwhelming and prevent the employer seeing their true capability.
Having the one-on-one support of someone not in the direct line leadership of the employer enables a more open and trusting relationship. One where the employee can feel comfortable saying what’s on their mind - knowing it doesn’t risk being a career limiting comment.
As trust builds, so does self-esteem and genuine self-confidence. This leads to a growth in self-belief and a willingness to persevere. New employees can be so good at pretending they’re confident, yet employers often miss the signals of what is ‘said’ versus what is ‘seen’. This is one of those moments in the employee / employer relationship that bring to head the choice to persevere or to walk away and ultimately end the employment contract.
Today’s generation of new employees desperately need to find employers who understand where the employee is starting from, and an employer that has the capacity themselves or partners with another organisation to supplement the in-house leadership skills and supporting framework to nurture them.
Closing the gap is not going to happen by itself, nor will there be any tangible improvement without movement from both sides of the challenge. The longer the gap is left unattended, the more difficult it will be to close it.
Share this article