You Can Shape Your Future Workforce

For the last year or so, we’ve been hearing booming statistics such as 50% of all employees will need reskilling for their current job roles by 2025. This sounds ominous and overwhelming to think about how we can keep our teams relevant for today’s work and somehow peer into a crystal ball to determine what they will need in the future. While you cannot predict everything that will happen in the future, you can spend some energy now preparing for it and actually gain momentum for your company along the way.

Begin by looking at your strategic plan. This, most likely, is a 3-5 year plan of the key initiatives you need your business to accomplish to further progress towards the company mission and vision. Thus, this is your roadmap for employee development as well. When you look at the top 3-5 key strategic business initiatives, what will be the core skills your leaders and your employees will need to exceed the goals set forth?

Next, push your thinking. Type “top 10 employee skills of the future” into your search engine to peruse a few articles that share insights to key future skills. When comparing this to your top skills list, are you missing a key competency? Does one skill depend on another? For example, if you identified complex problem solving as a top skill for your company, but then see critical thinking in your research, it may be best to assess your teams on both skills to ensure they have foundational critical thinking before you advance to complex problem solving.

Ask. Do not assume that you know your employee and leaders’ current skill level or their prioritized need until you ask. You can put together a simple survey requesting your team members to rate themselves on a scale of Novice to Expert on the skills you identified and then which top 3 skills will be most critical, in their opinion, for their success in the next year. While this data is not validated and is still subjective, it will give you a strong indication of your organizational skill gaps and where to start.

There are other, more complex, steps to future workforce planning and development that will help you determine the job roles and skill mixes you need to accomplish your future goals. This, however, is a great place to start and one that you can shape through a discussion with your peers and an assessment of your teams. Now, go show that crystal ball that you know what you are doing.