Understanding how to identify and leverage their experts can help organizations accelerate the reskilling—and retention—of their workforce. Tapping into the deep knowledge and natural inclinations of experts presents opportunities for companies to tackle the demands of the rapidly evolving world of work and ensure a talent pipeline. Let’s explore the challenge of digital transformation and how organizations can address their current labor shortages and utilize the professional mastery of experts to lead the effort to meet both current and future reskilling needs.
The Tough Road to Reskilling the Workforce
By 2030, the World Economic Forum predicts around 1.1 billion people will need reskilling in order to meet the challenges of digital transformation as technology radically changes their jobs.[1] This tech transformation impacts all sectors of the job market, from finance to manufacturing to agriculture, with approximately half of the current global workforce possibly needing reskilling by 2025.[1][2] But the need for reskilling isn’t just about the future. Millions of jobs continue to be added to the current global workforce—though they’re often left unfilled.[1] In the U.S. alone, almost 10 million jobs are now open.[3]
What’s often overlooked in this critical dialogue is the scarcity of expert talent to fill many of these roles. And without experts, companies face strategic hurdles, often unable to drive game-changing innovations or remain competitive in the marketplace. A valuable and forward-looking solution to this challenge is for companies to develop a deliberate and systematic approach to identify, assess, and accelerate the professional growth of their expert talent. With a well-planned system in place for expert development, organizations can more rapidly fill crucial vacant positions and, in turn, deploy those with deep expertise to train the next generation of talent.
How Experts Can Lead and Accelerate Reskilling
With a desire to achieve professional mastery, experts are often driven by opportunities to continuously learn and grow within their field of expertise and to share their knowledge. They’re also typically motivated by having a positive impact on a company’s goals and mission. Understanding and harnessing these expert tendencies can be a win-win situation for your organization and the expert, allowing them to play a leading role in upskilling and reskilling your workforce. Here are some of the ways that experts can participate by applying their expertise to accelerate reskilling:
- Coaching and mentoring: ongoing 1:1 sharing of relevant knowledge and constructive feedback to help guide and improve other employees’ professional growth
- Knowledge cascading: the process of experts passing along their knowledge to multiple learners who, in turn, pass the knowledge on to other workers[4]
- Competency building: creating competency-building plans to identify ways to strengthen and build upon employees’ existing capacities and remediate professional blind spots
By leaning into the core competencies and aspirations of their experts and creating systems to assess and accelerate their professional development, leaders can engage their workforce differently and ensure a consistent talent pipeline, while also reshaping their company in a more human-centric, strategic manner that builds resiliency and drives employee engagement.
References
[1] World Economic Forum. (2023). The reskilling revolution. https://initiatives.weforum.org/reskilling-revolution/home
[2] Beddoes, Z.M., Leopold, T., Prising, J., Vijayakumar, C., Garijo, B., bin Abdullah, A., & Al Falasi, H.B. (2023, January 17). Preparing 1 billion people for tomorrow’s economy. [Video]. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/sessions/preparing-1-billion-people-for-tomorrow-s-economy
[3] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, April 4). Job openings and labor turnover summary. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
[4] Leonard, D., & Martin, J. (2019, December 9). How your organization’s experts can share their knowledge. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/12/how-your-organizations-experts-can-share-their-knowledge
