How to solve the skills gap

I read an article in the Harvard Business Review recently: “The Employer – Educator Partnerships that can fill US Jobs” by Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman.* The article was excellent but the issue concerning the skills gap between college leavers and skills needed by employers is one of great concern. 

Their research was based on the US market, and they identified three main problems contributing to the skills gap:

• The struggle to produce workforce-ready employees
• An inadequate playbook for collaboration
• Colleges and employers trapped in low expectations of what each other can realistically deliver to improve the workforce situation.

Although the article was focused on the US, I believe it applies to every nation with talent shortages within their existing workforce impacting competitive advantage.

This issue has been around for as long as I can remember despite most governments introducing plans for addressing skills gaps in previous generations.

It is not just college leavers who need to demonstrate their technical skills to potential employers. It applies to everyone looking for work and, indeed, every organisation would benefit from a consistent approach to identifying the skill sets of every person in their organisation.

A potential way to close the skills gap is to have an agreed common framework of skills. Organisations could link this skills framework to defined job roles. Then people looking for work or development opportunities could map their actual hard and soft skills and experience against the skills framework.  Colleges and other training establishments could also map their courses against the framework to show how they can provide the necessary skills many organisations require their employees to have.

Developing a common language to explain what new skills organisations are looking for in their existing and new employees would help shape employee development. This mapping would also encourage employees into lifelong learning as they would be able to identify the skills required for a particular job. This could go a long way to solving the problem.

Skills Frameworks are not easy to develop. They take a lot of time and effort from industry experts to map current jobs and consider new technologies. A comprehensive framework is likely to take 3 – 5 years to develop. But many already exist. 

The four I am familiar with are Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework) and the National Institution of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US, The European Competency Framework (ECF) and the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). 

SFIA is the one I am most familiar with, due to our SFIA digital badge initiative. SFIA has an international user base and some countries are adopting it on a national basis for workforce planning to address their skills shortages. As they seek to identify the existing skills of their citizens, they can identify skills gaps and potential development programs.

From these wide-ranging skills assessments, external and internal training programs can be identified or developed to address skills gaps. Not only will the organisation have a workforce with more skills, they will also have better employee engagement and more employees recognising the value of lifelong learning benefiting from various reskilling initiatives.

SFIA was created in collaboration with external experts and employers based on the digital, IT and technology skills required by government and employers. The skills framework launched in 2000 and is updated on a regular basis to reflect industry trends and new technologies.

SFIA can be used to foster a common language for describing skills and competencies, to assess those skills and competencies, to feed in to training and individual employees development plans and be used in job descriptions when hiring new staff.

With comprehensive skills assessment, hiring may not be necessary as current employees may already have the right skills for the job roles that need to be filled.

A short overview can be seen on YouTube.

The skills framework has 7 levels of responsibility that bring together professional skills, behaviours and knowledge that reflect experience with the working environment and combine soft and hard skills.

The levels of responsibility are characterised by 5 generic attributes: Autonomy, Influence, Complexity, Business Skills and Knowledge, and the attributes are defined at each of the 7 levels of responsibility.

The levels of responsibility reflect corporate structures, where a team member working under supervision may exhibit skills at levels 1-3, whereas a COO could be operating at levels 6 or 7. Importantly the levels are not cumulative as you would not expect someone working at responsibility level 6 to demonstrate the skills defined at, say, levels 2 and 3. 

SFIA is continually updated and is currently on Version 8, where it has evolved into a framework that can used by business and technology professionals.

Version 9 is due in 2024 and the updates are community-led with a feedback window being opened to the public to submit their suggestions for changes in the next version. It is likely to include artificial intelligence and machine learning.

SFIA is run by a not-for-profit organisation based in the UK with a multinational governance board.

For organisations wishing to adopt SFIA, training and consulting support is available at commercial rates. However, organisations can use the framework at no cost.

Consultants offering services to map individual skills against SFIA charge around $250 to assess an individual in up to six skills. It is a small price to pay to solve a skills crisis.

The SFIA skills framework simplifies the process for colleges and other educational institutions to align their curriculum with industry-required skills, ensuring that what students learn directly and the actual skills they acquire correspond to the needs of industry.

Reviewing the SFIA content can help educators identify how to close the skills gap by creative and critical thinking about their development programs. For example, an English student would have content management and knowledge management skills. Highly sought skills in the current workforce. An economics student would have data management, data modelling, data visualisation and design and machine learning experience. These are skills that provide valuable insight into company performance and are required throughout the modern workforce and are not restricted to a specific job.