PLUGGING THE SKILLS GAP

It’s no secret that there’s a skills shortage in many industries, including healthcare, construction, technology, energy and renewables, retail and education.?

It’s a phenomenon that’s being experienced around the world, which is impacting productivity for organisations of all sizes. In fact, in February 2024, the Australian Productivity Commission reported national productivity fell 3.7% in 2022-23, despite record high increases in hours worked.

There are many reasons for the skills shortage, including new, post-pandemic ways of doing work, steep machine-learning curves, and increasing regulatory compliance requirements. Compounding these issues is the fact that the people who have both the traditional qualifications and core skills to adapt and succeed in today’s environment, are now typically doing the work of more than one person to cover the resourcing gap. Their load is too big to allow them to optimally function, which means many of them are suffering fatigue or burnout.?

To deal with this challenging situation, businesses are getting creative and moving towards skills-based, rather than qualification-based, hiring. Many US businesses have embraced the STAR certification system, which is based on skill and knowledge. Many large organisations are also creating their own business schools and online programs, such as Telstra’s AI Academy. Similarly, educational institutions are offering many online courses, such as the online AI certification we supported our people to complete last month through The Institute of Applied Technology.

There are three things organisations can do to address skill shortage.

1. Identify critical capability requirements: Some organisations are identifying, measuring and developing the critical capability needed to deliver their objectives. Typically, this capability includes both technical skills and transferable core skills, such as communication, emotional intelligence, and data and digital literacy. Capability is achieved when technical and core skills are refined and well-executed, which usually comes with experience.
2. Construct a skills infrastructure: When assessing the skills infrastructure needed by an organisation, it’s important to recognise the interconnected, dynamically changing, complex relationships across your most critical roles. Analysing hundreds of roles will translate into thousands of skills. The key is to identify the critical skills and roles, as well as where the pain points and problems are. The only way to do that is for leaders to work strategically and collaboratively with all parts of the organisation. Then, with a nuanced understanding, they will be able to plan for the skills infrastructure needed, and to attract and retain people with those skills in the right parts of the organisation.
3. Mobilise all parts of our community: There are many people within our community, including women, people with disabilities, migrants and Indigenous people, who have significant potential to be upskilled and mobilised. Through skills-based (rather than qualification-based) hiring practices, these people are likely to become a key part of the skills gap solution and help us solve the economic puzzle that we face.

How JOST&Co can help

To help companies experiencing skills shortages, we can help assess skill infrastructure requirements, including identifying existing capabilities that can be repurposed to relieve areas experiencing pain. We can also improve job design, including by adding a wellbeing overlay, to optimise performance and strengthen an organisation’s ability to respond to demands. Through human-centred design and design thinking, we can help organisations ensure they have the right culture for information-sharing and are better able to support their teams.

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Start mobilising the skills you need to succeed today: We create high quality solutions that are progressive, evidence based, pragmatic and flexible. Here is a scalable and impactful resource we have developed to support you in identifying and building the skills your workplace will need today and for tomorrow. Click here to download it.