68% of HR leaders surveyed believe building critical skills and competencies is their number one priority in 2021, but only 21% said their peers share accountability or partner with HR to determine future skill needs.
Most companies have been worrying about the negative impact of the pandemic on their bottom line. Revenues and sales have taken a massive hit. The cost of operating and scaling up to become remote-work ready almost immediately has escalated. But amid this concern, the more critical goal of preparing the talent for the new world, or of ensuring that the requisite skills are created, is getting overpowered.
The new Gartner, Inc. 2021 HR Priorities SurveyOpens a new window covering more than 750 HR leaders has found that 68% of the respondents believe building critical skills and competencies is their number one priority in 2021. The survey was conducted from June through August 2020. Other priorities for HR were organizational design and change management (46%), current and future leadership bench (44%), the future of work (32%), and employee experience (28%).
The survey findings validate what was expected to be a critical concern – short-term emphasis on cost reduction could lead to long-term loss of competitive skill sets for business growth. HR recognizes this as an area of development already, but do businesses recognize it too? HR may plan to drive its efforts toward capability building, but leadership buy-in is needed to ensure smooth implementation.
Changed Approach To Reskilling
As per the survey, organizations need to take a new approach to reskilling and redeploying talent while involving business leaders as impacted stakeholders to work together toward shifting skill needs and find ways to develop skills. At present, only 21% of HR leaders said that their peers share accountability or partner with HR to determine future skill needs. This could become a significant reason for the delayed identification of new skills. The fact that 37% of HR leaders surveyed shared that their organization’s managers aren’t equipped to lead change is another aspect that compounds this issue.
Without a plan of action derived by both HR and frontline managers – for the entire workforce – no reskilling exercise is likely to succeed.
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The Concern Around L&D Has Been Growing Through 2021
Gartner has been releasing a series of trends by way of its reports and analysis through 2020.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread, in February 2020Opens a new window , Gartner shares how most CHROs were directing their efforts towards three trends – AI and automation, the gig economy, and an aging yet multigenerational workforce. However, even at that time, it had highlighted the need to recreate the entire learning process. The survey explained that almost all organizations used on-the-job learning for employee skills development and that Gartner research revealed is a top priority for 73% of CHROs. But what they were not preparing for was the shift by 2025, wherein half of all internal development opportunities created due to on-the-job learning will actually be eliminated due to role redesign.
In April 2020Opens a new window , Gartner surveyed 113 L&D professionals. 71% of respondents reported that more than 40% of their workforce has had to use new skills due to changes to work due to COVID-19. The same survey revealed almost 6 in 10 L&D professionals said their organizations had created new trainings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This already indicates a shift that was probably long due but was triggered by the pandemic and the need to revamp the entire workforce.
In August 2020Opens a new window , a hugely significant finding that reiterated the need for a more agile and dynamic learning approach was employees applying only 54% of the new skills they learn, despite the number of skills required for a single job increasing by 10% year-over-year, per Gartner. This explains how a continually evolving approach to skill development is the need of the hour. The data showed that the dynamic skills approach boosts other key talent outcomes as well, such as a 24% improvement in employee performance and a 34% improvement in employees going above and beyond at work.
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With the current survey showing how the HR leaders have realized the need for a more comprehensive approach, the research seems to come a full circle from the beginning of 2020. It is time to see if these two elements – an active role by business leaders in driving skill development and an agile knowledge building process – make an appearance in companies’ L&D strategy in 2021.