The Key to Enterprise Agility: A Culture of Learning

Webinar1 min read

September 5, 2023

About this Resource:

Agile companies can react faster, adapt more rapidly to meet the evolving demands of the business landscape and leverage new ideas for a competitive edge, resulting in increased innovation. A recent Deloitte study found that companies with a continuous learning culture are more than 46 percent more likely to be first to market, 36 percent more productive and 92 percent more likely to innovate. Further, these organizations tend to be 30 percent more likely to be market leaders in their industries for an extended period. They also succeed in creating cultures where people are empowered through technology to evolve, adapt and drive change more effectively. Join CLO for this conversation among leaders in learning and higher education as they explore why a culture of learning is the key to unlocking the agility that companies need in times of change and volatility.


Speakers:

  • Ruth Steyn, Vice President, Program Strategy, 2U/edX
  • Marian Cook, Head Managing Instructor, 2U
  • Ellana Venn, Associate Vice President HR – Learning & Organizational Development, Geotab
  • Hillary Miller, Chief Learning Officer, Penn State Health

Moderator: 

  • Sonia Malik, Global Program Director – IBM SkillsBuild, Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM

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Webinar: Workforce development as a corporate resiliency strategy

Webinar1 min read

September 5, 2023

About this Webinar:

The pace of business disruption, innovation and opportunity is moving faster than ever. Organizations that survive and thrive are those that derive business agility from a future-looking workforce development effort and a culture of learning.

Join our panel of experts from IDC, Nelnet, and edX as they discuss:

  • The emerging vulnerabilities, challenges and opportunities IDC has identified that businesses should expect to face in the next 5 years
  • How industry leaders making workforce development central to resiliency strategies and building competitive advantage for the future
  • Real-world examples of how workforce development strategies are being tapped to build new skills and competencies in the enterprise, develop the next generation of leaders, and meet recruiting and retention objectives

Featuring:

Amy Loomis, Ph.D., Research Director, Future of Work

Sheri Norfolk, Senior Training Developer Nelnet 

Allison Gemelke, Senior Corporate Trainer, Nelnet 

Dianna Berisha, Director of Customer Solutions & Operations, edX 

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Your Talent Strategy For Closing Skills Gaps

Article9 min read

August 21, 2023

Today’s businesses are experiencing tremendous pressure to keep up with human, social, and technological changes. For one, we don’t work the way we used to. We work through digital tools, remotely or in hybrid arrangements, for longer careers and more employers, at full-time jobs and side hustles. Then, there’s our ever-changing world of technology where nothing ever really stays the same.

It’s no wonder that skills gaps are growing across several industries, making it often difficult for organizations, and the professionals who work for them, to adapt to the dynamic demands of their market. McKinsey research shows that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 59% of leaders already felt that skills building was essential to long-term growth.1 That figure has since risen to 78%.2

While technology and digitalization present opportunities for positive change, these can’t be utilized without appropriately skilled professionals — learning and development (L&D) managers — to guide their organization through appropriate developmental programs, and help professionals apply their newly learned skills.3 Nor can such programs be easily set up without a strategy in place, and often without outside expert support.

The age of disruption

We live in an age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, all of which lead to rapid change within businesses. These are the 10 biggest factors causing disruption across organizations:4

It’s no surprise COVID-19 sits atop the list, having accelerated and amplified the impact of other factors, such as digital transformation in businesses.5

Regardless, all the disruptors above are shifting the skills requirements for a host of industries, most notably financial services, advanced technology, and telecommunications. The business areas most affected, meaning those experiencing the greatest skills gap, are data analytics, followed by IT management, executive management, HR and talent management, and sales and marketing operations.6

How professionals and companies are responding

A recent GetSmarter survey of nearly 6,000 people across 128 countries found that 58% of respondents anticipated needing to learn new skills for the current job within the next six months.7

Currently, C-suite professionals are learning more than anyone else, with 57% engaged in reskilling. That’s good news, because it indicates that a majority of business leaders recognize the need to address and close the skills development gap — an understanding that may lead to more learning opportunities across all professional levels.

And while many professionals may still feel that they are solely responsible for their career development, it doesn’t necessarily have to be so — in fact, more and more L&D managers are being tasked with setting up upskilling and reskilling programs.8 In fact, L&D managers have never been so valued, nor under such pressure. Without them, and without an enterprise development team, businesses that want to help their employees upskill run several risks, such as:

  • A disconnect between upskilling choices and the organization’s needs and goals
  • Haphazardly designed programs with minimal impact, or impact limited only to certain teams
  • Lengthy launches of skills development programs
  • Low retention levels, due to a lack of real career-partnerships meant to help employees on their professional journey

How to close the skills gaps

To address these issues, leadership, talent, and L&D managers typically focus on three strategies: hire, reskill, and upskill.

Hire:

Talent and recruitment teams face a shortage of applicants, let alone highly skilled ones, which forces them to look at hiring differently.9 Here are a few steps you may want to take if your organization faces similar challenges:

  • Change recruitment mindsets to focus on the desired skills rather than personalities, and welcome a broader diversity of backgrounds.
  • Review hiring procedures to ensure promising candidates are not rejected by traditional screening methods.
  • Look beyond traditional labor pools to include older workers, those with disabilities, foreign talent, and veterans.

Hiring is also timely and expensive — in the U.S., it takes an average of 36 to 42 days, and costs $1,633, to fill a position.10 Moreover, when unemployment stands near historic lows, as it currently does in the U.S., it also leaves very little available talent to pick from.11 To top it, the “great resignation” spurred by the pandemic has seen record numbers of people leaving their jobs, creating significant issues for hiring teams. Case in point, of all hiring managers surveyed by Prudential Financial:12

  • 58% don’t receive enough applications to fill their vacancies.
  • 71% say the applications they receive don’t match the skills required.
  • 82% are willing to hire someone who requires initial training.

That last statistic is particularly telling: New-hire training may be a solution for many employers, and could be for your organization, too. For instance, Netflix recently employed this tactic to improve workforce diversity, by partnering with edX and establishing the Netflix Pathways Boot Camps to teach industry-relevant tech skills to under-represented populations. By doing so, Netflix, in partnership with edX, grew a more diversified, and qualified, talent pool.

Reskill:

You don’t always have to look to the external talent pool to bridge skills gaps — you could focus instead on reskilling your current staff. A World Economic Forum survey found that 50% of workers would need reskilling by 2025, and 40% of respondents expected that to take six months or less.13

From a financial perspective, reskilling makes sense. A report by the Financial Services Skills Commission in the UK found that reskilling a financial services employee costs an average of £31,850, compared with a redundancy and rehire cost of £80,875 — a saving of £49,025.14 It’s therefore not surprising that 53% of business leaders prefer reskilling over engaging freelancers or contractors, or even hiring new talent.15

Reskilling is also a key way to retain talent — it not only offers learning opportunities, which leads to an increase in job satisfaction, but it also promotes internal mobility. A recent Gallup survey found, for example, that 57% of workers in the U.S. want to update their skills, and so much so, that 48% would even consider moving jobs to improve skills. But, here’s the good news: According to the same Gallup survey, not only do 71% of workers in the U.S. report an increase in job satisfaction through training and development, 61% of workers consider learning opportunities a good reason to stay at their job.16

In other words, the opportunity to retrain at work could be a big retention incentive for employees at your organization, especially those who may want to pivot careers.

Upskill:

Reskilling gives employees the chance to develop new skills. Upskilling, on the other hand, helps them augment their existing skills on a continual basis so that they can adapt more easily to the evolving requirements of their jobs and careers.

Upskilling can prevent skill gaps and develop better resilience against accelerating change.17 Though not always, it’s also often done within hybrid roles — these are jobs that include both technical expertise (hard skills) and traditional (soft) skills such as leadership.18 For example, an employee who learns to automate everyday tasks, and applies their learning to their work, can soon free up more time for strategic thinking and collaboration. 

What skills you need to prioritize

Many of the skills required to keep pace with modern businesses and industries are naturally aligned with digital capabilities. However, as digital capabilities become assumed for most professional jobs, the key differentiators among candidates are increasingly more human-centric: analytical and critical reasoning, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities.19

There are also many advantages to focusing on human-centric development. Skills specific to particular jobs — such as software proficiency, programming languages, coding, or digital marketing capabilities — will require more frequent upskilling. On the other hand, analytical skills, human-centric skills, and the fundamental capabilities required to leverage digital tools have much greater longevity.20

What’s also clear is that digital transformation in organizations is majorly influencing what we should be learning, when, and how. Ultimately, you and your L&D team will need to balance both types of skills: the ones needed now, and those your organization will need later.

Your guide to digital transformation skills

GetSmarter’s Digital Transformation Skills Framework lists the key capabilities your employees should have to stay on top of current and future digital skills and technologies. It also provides a foundation on which to build your L&D programs.

This framework places interpersonal skills (such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity, and adaptability) at the center of four other categories of skills that organizations may want to develop now and for the future.21 It also speaks to many of the skills gaps that organizations currently face, yet those skills are the most valuable capabilities to have if you’re aiming for a successful digital transformation.

The future of skills development

Skills development is no longer simply a business augmentation; it’s an essential component of survival, both for organizations and for individual professionals. Companies with a view to the future continue growing because they understand that to learn is to innovate.22

There may be no one-size-fits-all approach to skills development — each organization, team, and professional being unique — yet two aspects of it are a must for all:

  • In the age of disruption, skills development should be conducted on an ongoing basis as part of any organization’s strategy for closing continually evolving skills gaps.
  • Skills development should take place across an organization, rather than in silos; if technical teams are getting upskilled, for example, then leadership should be learning how to better support the new needs and goals of those employees.

Owing to time, budgetary, and remote-working pressures, training programs will also likely have to be delivered through digital channels, which have the advantage of being easily scalable — but the digital aspect is no surprise: Learning, in the era of digital transformation, has already gone digital. What is more, remote learning has the potential to deliver essential skills quickly and prompt employees to exercise them immediately on the job, improving engagement and performance.23

With this in mind, edX For Business can help you curate a holistic skills development strategy, across a range of disciplines and learning styles. From closing technical skills with boot camps, to leadership development with executive education courses or company wide upskilling with open courses —  edX For Business can help you future-proof your workforce.

Are you keeping pace with today’s fast-changing skills requirements? Learn how edX For Business can help future-proof your people and your business, by helping you close skill gaps.

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Educating Leaders – A Deep Dive Into Executive Education

White Paper1 min read

May 26, 2023

About this White Paper

As the world and business landscape becomes more complex, the capabilities required from professionals in leadership and decision making roles are demanding constant transformation. As a result, developing high potential employees, managers, and leaders is an essential element of an organization’s people strategy. Importantly, this audience desires a richer, more engaging and impactful learning experience.

Download the white paper to:

  • Learn what capabilities are demanded in today’s complex workplace from professionals in leadership and decision making roles 
  • Learn the critical role executive education plays in preparing professionals to lead organizations through constant transformation and the importance of providing a more engaging and impactful learning experience.

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IDC InfoBrief – Innovation Multiplied: The Power of Skills

White Paper1 min read

January 17, 2023

About this Resource

By 2025 some 90% of organizations will feel the impact of skills shortage, costing $6.5 trillion worldwide in delayed product releases, reduced customer satisfaction and lost revenue and profits. This InfoBrief offers insight into how organizations can ensure they remain innovative in times of change through the power of skills development.

Here’s what you will learn:

  • Survey results quantifying the negative impact of skills shortages in the global marketplace
  • How to tackle the challenges of attracting and retaining top talent
  • What are the top skills gaps and recommended ways L&D can address them
  • Which are the most critical technology and human skills for your organization to hire or develop
  • Practical steps to build a culture of learning in a volatile work environment

IDC Research Analysts

  • Amy Loomis, Ph.D. Research Vice President, Future of Work, IDC
  • Gina Smith, Ph.D. Research Director, IT Skills for Digital Business, IDC

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Six strategies to help you implement leadership development

Article8 min read

December 1, 2022

As companies emerge into a post-pandemic regime with all the new expectations, challenges and opportunities that it brings, they face a number of trends that are upending conventional management philosophies. The pace and volume of information is rising and bypassing existing hierarchies, leading to information overload. Increased automation is eroding traditional notions of predictability and control, and employees’ career expectations are changing.1

Management practices are being challenged and leaders must rise to the occasion — and they know it. Sixty percent of executives worldwide see effective leadership as a critical skill needed to prepare for changes the future will no doubt bring.2  At the same time, the understanding of what leadership means is changing: rather than a destination, it is a journey of continual learning, development, and reflection. 3



Leadership is like a muscle: it needs to be exercised all the time.4 And just as professional athletes don’t start training when they’re drafted for the national team, leaders can’t wait until a promotion comes to start exercising that muscle; they need to start much earlier, in whatever position they may occupy in an organization. This is important for more than just effective succession planning; it also lets employees feel their work has greater impact.5 For this reason, companies must empower their staff to make decisions: it’s essential for developing the necessary organizational agility to cope with rapid and constant change.6

Employees with leadership skills are in high demand, and training them to one day become leaders has a tangible and positive impact on staff retention. Case in point: during the Great Resignation when millions of professionals quit their jobs, more than half of US workers cited a lack of appreciation from their managers as the cause.7 Had organizations invested in helping their talented employees to develop leadership and other skills, they may not have been impacted as greatly.

While much has been made of younger employees’ emphasis on learning skills at work, leadership development is a good way to keep employees engaged across the generations. Management and leadership skills are the number one learning priority not only for Millennials and Gen X, but also for the Baby Boomer generation still active.8 Focused and personalized leadership development also presents an opportunity to improve diversity in management, and ensures that underrepresented groups advance at the same pace as their colleagues.9

Learning and development (L&D) managers are best positioned within an organization to effectively plan the development of leadership skills in both entry-level and experienced employees. The following six strategies will guide you in implementing leadership development from the ground up:

1. Identify your company’s leadership skills gap

While it’s important to provide every employee with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills, one cost-effective strategy could be to identify which leadership positions need to be filled immediately, so you can start providing training for those as soon as possible. There are a number of ways to approach this, such as:10

  • Using leadership assessment tools coupled with one-on-one interviews for context to find gaps and strengths.
  • Identifying measurable business performance deficiencies, and speaking with the leaders associated with these to find out what they need.
  • Looking out for regular complaints, and for departments with higher-than-average absenteeism or resignation rates.
  • Reviewing your company’s strategy to see if you have the necessary leadership skills to execute it.
  • Imagining losing your top executives — do you have people who could fill their shoes?

2. Identify leadership potential

Building a sustainable leadership pipeline requires a commitment to nurturing and developing high-potential employees throughout the organization. Take the time to understand their career goals and personalize their training, which will make them feel that they’re on a clear developmental path, and will in turn increase their engagement in the business.11

The first step to doing so is to identify the employees with leadership potential. Look out for emergent leaders, meaning employees who, rather than being formally assigned a leadership position, naturally assume leadership roles in their teams through their interactions with others. These employees are typically influential, reliable, inspiring, and encourage collaboration.12

And so, when you foster emergent leadership in your organization, you not only enable leaders to rise naturally, but also encourage autonomy, because emergent leadership flows from the capacity to think for yourself, rather than expecting others to tell you what to do. Be careful, however, not to mistake raw charisma for leadership. Not all emergent leaders are extroverts — some may be much less outspoken than others, and L&D managers should be mindful of acknowledging and supporting them too.13

Once you’ve identified high-potential leaders, unlock their talent through appropriate, focused training programs. Executive education courses are valuable for even non-executive employees, and impart valuable business and leadership skills quickly and with a focus on practical application to accelerate their growth within your business.

3. Invest in underrepresented leaders

Diversity in leadership development is a societal issue that requires initiatives targeting groups that have historically been underrepresented on the basis of race, disability, gender, and so forth. Such initiatives can help create a more representative management team, which will in turn attract a more diverse workforce. But developing diverse leaders will require more than HR initiatives or hiring allocations; it will require a reassessment of your organizational culture. Consider these steps:14

4. Develop your managers into leaders

The impact that managers have on employees’, and thus the company’s, performance can’t be overstated. In fact, Gallup found that 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is due to the quality of their manager.15 However, not all managers have strong, inherent leadership skills, or have been given training to develop these. When you take into account the effect of managers on workforce performance, it makes sense to overinvest in their development — and even more so when you consider that managers offer a pool of potential executive talent by virtue of already being in a leadership position.

A study of hundreds of job roles and competencies established that high-performing managers usually have these leadership capabilities:16

  • The capacity to build relationships and trust in sharing ideas and getting things done
  • The ability to develop others through clear expectations, encouragement, and coaching
  • Aptness at driving change by setting goals and adapting work to align with those goals
  • Talent at inspiring and motivating people through vision, confidence, positivity, and recognition
  • Critical-thinking skills and the ability to solve problems
  • Effective, efficient, and open communication skills
  • The capability to hold others and themselves accountable for performance

Providing formal training to develop these skills in your managers is important, but so is mentorship by senior leaders, especially in the early stages of handling new management responsibilities. L&D should create opportunities for collaborative and feedback-based learning by asking managers to provide feedback on challenges and successes in an environment geared toward knowledge sharing and improvement. Such review sessions can be a great learning opportunity for both them and, ultimately, the company at large. It can also be an opportunity for managers to further develop empathy and listening skills, deepen their emotional intelligence, and explore different conflict resolution tactics.17

5. Nurture current leadership with continuous development

In order to guide businesses through an evolving and uncertain business world, leaders need to understand and have the skills to engage with the technological trends driving change, including automation, big data, AI, and machine learning, alongside social ones like sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion. But if we expect leaders to adapt continuously to these trends, then it stands to reason that even those currently in leadership roles should engage in continuous personal and professional development.

Slowly but surely, the mindset is shifting away from employee learning as an event, to learning in the flow of work. Increasingly, learning is becoming digital and is happening at work, rather than outside of it.18

One of the key challenges facing leadership development is that there isn’t enough time for leaders to learn and practice the necessary skills, because it takes them away from their responsibilities. Embedding learning in the flow of work is one step towards solving this, but certain competencies are still best taught through courses. Regardless, it’s crucial to give leaders sufficient opportunity for reflection and self-development. This means time for thinking about their behaviors and how these can be changed, and for practicing new skills, which should ideally occur in a sandbox or simulation environment, to build confidence and avoid any costly mistakes.19

6. Lifelong leadership development

An ever-changing technology landscape necessitates constant reskilling and upskilling, which in turn requires a constant focus on learning. The same goes for leadership skills, which leaders – both incumbent and emergent – need to sharpen continuously to keep pace with shifting social trends and workforce expectations. 

Successful, long-serving leaders tend to be agile learners, which is why learning agility is a quality business should seek. Hiring managers can identify agile learners by asking questions about how they’ve dealt with challenges and learned from their mistakes, while L&D managers should foster a culture of curiosity and openness, providing on-the-job learning opportunities and stretch assignments that give employees the opportunity to rise to new challenges.20

Developing skills at every level is a priority for all organizations. edX For Business offers a wealth of solutions to help businesses on their journey to growing the leaders that tomorrow’s world requires.

Ready to foster leadership and innovation in every sphere of your business? Learn how edX For Business’ innovative learning solutions can help you develop crucial leadership skills at all levels of your organization.

Accelerate the workforce of the future, with edX

Whether you’re a business leader, L&D executive, or other professional, we offer compelling data and insights for why an outcomes-based skills program is key to succeeding in tomorrow’s workplace.


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How Forward-looking Business Leaders are Supporting DEIB

White Paper1 min read

September 20, 2022

About this Resource

Embracing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) makes for a stronger organization. Expanding and sustaining it takes both commitment and resilience.

Download the research snapshot to learn:

  • 6 DEIB initiatives that visionary business leaders are implementing in their organizations 
  • Expert insight into how strong DEIB organizations are built 
  • Top metrics reported to demonstrate how DEIB is gaining traction and building permanence across organizations


Brought to you by Chief Learning Officer

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Full Speed Ahead: Winning the Race for Top Talent

Webinar1 min read

August 25, 2022

About this Resource

In the midst of The Great Resignation and widening skill gaps, the war for talent in 2022 is real. As companies struggle to recruit job-ready employees with the required technical skills, they are being forced to rethink and streamline their hiring initiatives to ensure they get ahead in the race for top talent. But how are organizations working to bridge these rapidly expanding skill gaps and build a diverse, job ready, talent pipeline at scale? Join this conversation that will delve into what today’s learning leaders are doing to solve these challenges and future-proof their workforce.

Presented By

Valerie Egan
Director of Learning & Development & HR Business Partner, Girl Scouts of USA

Patrick Sutton
Head of People, MainStreet

Millette Granville
Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, 2U

Rich Reynolds
Vice President of Enterprise Sales, Americas, edX

John Schwartz
Head of Global Business Development, edX

Stacey Young Rivers
Senior Director of People Growth + Enterprise Skills Strategy, Warner Bros. Discovery

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Your Talent Strategy For Closing Skills Gaps

Article9 min read

August 19, 2022

Today’s businesses are experiencing tremendous pressure to keep up with human, social, and technological changes. For one, we don’t work the way we used to. We work through digital tools, remotely or in hybrid arrangements, for longer careers and more employers, at full-time jobs and side hustles. Then, there’s our ever-changing world of technology where nothing ever really stays the same.

It’s no wonder that skills gaps are growing across several industries, making it often difficult for organizations, and the professionals who work for them, to adapt to the dynamic demands of their market. McKinsey research shows that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 59% of leaders already felt that skills building was essential to long-term growth.1 That figure has since risen to 78%.2

While technology and digitalization present opportunities for positive change, these can’t be utilized without appropriately skilled professionals — learning and development (L&D) managers — to guide their organization through appropriate developmental programs, and help professionals apply their newly learned skills.3 Nor can such programs be easily set up without a strategy in place, and often without outside expert support.

The age of disruption

We live in an age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, all of which lead to rapid change within businesses. These are the 10 biggest factors causing disruption across organizations: 4

It’s no surprise COVID-19 sits atop the list, having accelerated and amplified the impact of other factors, such as digital transformation in businesses.5

Regardless, all the disruptors above are shifting the skills requirements for a host of industries, most notably financial services, advanced technology, and telecommunications. The business areas most affected, meaning those experiencing the greatest skills gap, are data analytics, followed by IT management, executive management, HR and talent management, and sales and marketing operations.6

How professionals and companies are responding

A recent GetSmarter survey of nearly 6,000 people across 128 countries found that 58% of respondents anticipated needing to learn new skills for the current job within the next six months.7

Currently, C-suite professionals are learning more than anyone else, with 57% engaged in reskilling. That’s good news, because it indicates that a majority of business leaders recognize the need to address and close the skills development gap — an understanding that may lead to more learning opportunities across all professional levels.

And while many professionals may still feel that they are solely responsible for their career development, it doesn’t necessarily have to be so — in fact, more and more L&D managers are being tasked with setting up upskilling and reskilling programs.8 In fact, L&D managers have never been so valued, nor under such pressure. Without them, and without an enterprise development team, businesses that want to help their employees upskill run several risks, such as:

  • A disconnect between upskilling choices and the organization’s needs and goals
  • Haphazardly designed programs with minimal impact, or impact limited only to certain teams
  • Lengthy launches of skills development programs
  • Low retention levels, due to a lack of real career-partnerships meant to help employees on their professional journey

How to close the skills gaps

To address these issues, leadership, talent, and L&D managers typically focus on three strategies: hire, reskill, and upskill.

Hire:

Talent and recruitment teams face a shortage of applicants, let alone highly skilled ones, which forces them to look at hiring differently.9 Here are a few steps you may want to take if your organization faces similar challenges:

  • Change recruitment mindsets to focus on the desired skills rather than personalities, and welcome a broader diversity of backgrounds.
  • Review hiring procedures to ensure promising candidates are not rejected by traditional screening methods.
  • Look beyond traditional labor pools to include older workers, those with disabilities, foreign talent, and veterans.

Hiring is also timely and expensive — in the U.S., it takes an average of 36 to 42 days, and costs $1,633, to fill a position.10 Moreover, when unemployment stands near historic lows, as it currently does in the U.S., it also leaves very little available talent to pick from.11 To top it, the “great resignation” spurred by the pandemic has seen record numbers of people leaving their jobs, creating significant issues for hiring teams. Case in point, of all hiring managers surveyed by Prudential Financial:12

  • 58% don’t receive enough applications to fill their vacancies.
  • 71% say the applications they receive don’t match the skills required.
  • 82% are willing to hire someone who requires initial training.

That last statistic is particularly telling: New-hire training may be a solution for many employers, and could be for your organization, too. For instance, Netflix recently employed this tactic to improve workforce diversity, by partnering with edX and establishing the Netflix Pathways Boot Camps to teach industry-relevant tech skills to under-represented populations. By doing so, Netflix, in partnership with edX, grew a more diversified, and qualified, talent pool.

Reskill:

You don’t always have to look to the external talent pool to bridge skills gaps — you could focus instead on reskilling your current staff. A World Economic Forum survey found that 50% of workers would need reskilling by 2025, and 40% of respondents expected that to take six months or less. 13

From a financial perspective, reskilling makes sense. A report by the Financial Services Skills Commission in the UK found that reskilling a financial services employee costs an average of £31,850, compared with a redundancy and rehire cost of £80,875 — a saving of £49,025.14 It’s therefore not surprising that 53% of business leaders prefer reskilling over engaging freelancers or contractors, or even hiring new talent.15

Reskilling is also a key way to retain talent — it not only offers learning opportunities, which leads to an increase in job satisfaction, but it also promotes internal mobility. A recent Gallup survey found, for example, that 57% of workers in the U.S. want to update their skills, and so much so, that 48% would even consider moving jobs to improve skills. But, here’s the good news: According to the same Gallup survey, not only do 71% of workers in the U.S. report an increase in job satisfaction through training and development, 61% of workers consider learning opportunities a good reason to stay at their job.16

In other words, the opportunity to retrain at work could be a big retention incentive for employees at your organization, especially those who may want to pivot careers.

Upskill:

Reskilling gives employees the chance to develop new skills. Upskilling, on the other hand, helps them augment their existing skills on a continual basis so that they can adapt more easily to the evolving requirements of their jobs and careers.

Upskilling can prevent skill gaps and develop better resilience against accelerating change.17 Though not always, it’s also often done within hybrid roles — these are jobs that include both technical expertise (hard skills) and traditional (soft) skills such as leadership.18 For example, an employee who learns to automate everyday tasks, and applies their learning to their work, can soon free up more time for strategic thinking and collaboration. 

What skills you need to prioritize

Many of the skills required to keep pace with modern businesses and industries are naturally aligned with digital capabilities. However, as digital capabilities become assumed for most professional jobs, the key differentiators among candidates are increasingly more human-centric: analytical and critical reasoning, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities.19

There are also many advantages to focusing on human-centric development. Skills specific to particular jobs — such as software proficiency, programming languages, coding, or digital marketing capabilities — will require more frequent upskilling. On the other hand, analytical skills, human-centric skills, and the fundamental capabilities required to leverage digital tools have much greater longevity.20

What’s also clear is that digital transformation in organizations is majorly influencing what we should be learning, when, and how. Ultimately, you and your L&D team will need to balance both types of skills: the ones needed now, and those your organization will need later.

Your guide to digital transformation skills

GetSmarter’s Digital Transformation Skills Framework lists the key capabilities your employees should have to stay on top of current and future digital skills and technologies. It also provides a foundation on which to build your L&D programs.

This framework places interpersonal skills (such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity, and adaptability) at the center of four other categories of skills that organizations may want to develop now and for the future.21 It also speaks to many of the skills gaps that organizations currently face, yet those skills are the most valuable capabilities to have if you’re aiming for a successful digital transformation.

The future of skills development

Skills development is no longer simply a business augmentation; it’s an essential component of survival, both for organizations and for individual professionals. Companies with a view to the future continue growing because they understand that to learn is to innovate.22

There may be no one-size-fits-all approach to skills development — each organization, team, and professional being unique — yet two aspects of it are a must for all:

  • In the age of disruption, skills development should be conducted on an ongoing basis as part of any organization’s strategy for closing continually evolving skills gaps.
  • Skills development should take place across an organization, rather than in silos; if technical teams are getting upskilled, for example, then leadership should be learning how to better support the new needs and goals of those employees.

Owing to time, budgetary, and remote-working pressures, training programs will also likely have to be delivered through digital channels, which have the advantage of being easily scalable — but the digital aspect is no surprise: Learning, in the era of digital transformation, has already gone digital. What is more, remote learning has the potential to deliver essential skills quickly and prompt employees to exercise them immediately on the job, improving engagement and performance.23

With this in mind, edX For Business can help you curate a holistic skills development strategy, across a range of disciplines and learning styles. From closing technical skills with boot camps, to leadership development with executive education courses or company wide upskilling with open courses —  edX For Business can help you future-proof your workforce.

Are you keeping pace with today’s fast-changing skills requirements? Learn how edX For Business can help future-proof your people and your business, by helping you close skill gaps.

Accelerate the workforce of the future, with edX

Whether you’re a business leader, L&D executive, or other professional, we offer compelling data and insights for why an outcomes-based skills program is key to succeeding in tomorrow’s workplace.


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How Mature is Your L&D Measurement Strategy?

White Paper1 min read

August 8, 2022

About this Resource

Over the past five years, learning and development has seen a transition of their reported metrics and measures from being almost wholly qualitatively based to a blend of both quantitative and qualitative data. 

L&D measurement maturity is achieved when an organization can establish and maintain a reliable, workable and achievable measurement strategy that meets the organization’s needs in the present while being flexible enough to accommodate the organization’s growth and technology advancements in the future.

If ten L&D professionals were asked to name their program’s biggest soft spot, nine of them would say … “Measurement”

Download the research snapshot to learn:

  • 6 reliable ways to assess the effectiveness and maturity of your learning and development strategy
  • How you can better align your organization’s learning and development strategies with its business objectives
  • Top metrics reported to demonstrate training impact and how they have shifted to a qualitative/quantitative mix
  • The discrepancy between aligning L&D with business objectives and measurement


Brought to you by Chief Learning Officer

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