Four workforce trends for your business – and your people

Trend #1 – More about skills, less about roles

In their recent report, Gartner stated that “to build the post-pandemic workforce, [we will need to] focus less on roles – which group unrelated skills – and more on the skills needed to drive an organisation’s competitive advantage and the workflows that fuel this advantage.”

This shift comes off the back of 24 months of unprecedented business challenges: skills shortages, digital transformation, disrupted business models and changing worker expectations. Skills are paramount because they help address business challenges. Roles, however, simply categorise and denote how one employee relates to all others within an organisational structure.

By focussing on skills rather than job roles, businesses can also provide their people with the opportunity to transcend a specific function. This kind of flexibility allows for greater all-round value to the business in areas that lie outside the KPIs of a specific job role (ie: supporting colleagues, working cross-functionally).

The argument for continuous, career-long learning has never been stronger.

In the year ahead, Workforce Planning and Learning & Development teams will need to perform crucial skills gaps analyses. It will then also be their responsibility, along with senior management, to set in motion a mindset shift for employees to consider adopting critical skills as opposed to preparing for the next specific role.