By Adrian Langton, CPO of boutique digital consultancy, BML
“Koyaanisqatsi – noun: 1. Life out of balance. 2. Life of moral corruption and turmoil. 3. Crazy life. 4. Life in turmoil.5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.”[1]
When it comes to skills, there has been a recent plethora of sobering figures. Even though training has an impressively high ROI – 353% in one 2023 piece by Accenture[2] – that training does not seem to be hitting the mark for businesses. 20% of the UK workforce – approximately 6.5million people – is set to be significantly under-skilled by 2030[3].
For the high growth medium sized business sector, 65% of UK MSBs have increased their investment in skills development over the past two years to improve productivity. Not surprisingly, digital and data skills are identified as those most in need. And equally expected is that 77% of MSB leaders see poor skills availability as a negative impact on productivity[4].
The painful truth looming into view is that skills being so out of balance with business demands is a threat to growth.
Sadly, years of investment in legacy eLearning systems has yet to prove a saviour: even though the market to reach $30.1578 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 18.2%[5], uptake of the technology is facing many barriers – chief among them being a lack of clarity as to the return on investment in these systems.
Tackling the legacy of eLearning
Legacy eLearning has long been seen as unavoidable – a cost centre that enables businesses to keep up in a changing world. Implementations have focused on minimising the disruption of the innovative technology and trying to secure savings to offset elevated levels of investment.
However, as these systems have not been aligned to current or future demands, they have been ineffective in enabling growth for businesses or even giving them an edge in the wars for talent.
Businesses typically report that these systems are rarely as agile or flexible as needed and lack depth of content. As such they quickly become obsolete.
In a digital, AI-driven age, these factors are unacceptable. All technology should empower a business: and in this case, that empowerment comes from matching skills – and the acquisition of those skills through learning – to three business objectives.
Objective 1: skills and growth
The wars for talent still rage – and for companies looking to grow rapidly, developing both individual and company-wide skills is critical. A skills profile that does not match the needs of current or future business, exposes an organization to the risks of not meeting performance targets or SLAs for clients.
Skills capacity management is a vital discipline to not only improve how business is served today but also ensure future activity. Businesses can model current needs and then predict capacity and ensure that the subsequent learning develops and allocates the right resources efficiently.
Objective 2: skills and efficiency
Legacy eLearning is often expensive and drawn out. Consequently, it is managed as a diversion from ongoing business that disrupts operations and so must be compartmentalised.
However, overseen correctly, a skills development programme can become an opportunity to drive operational efficiency in multiple ways, making human resource development more cost-effective, scalable, and impactful.
This is done by integrating skills development with other initiatives, making it a strategic pillar of improved productivity.
This in turn means that the technology should support a better delivery of training, so staff, users, and partners alike report greater satisfaction. And as training demands change, a skills-centric approach should improve the capability of the business to respond to new needs by making the creation of new content easy and quick.
Objective 3: skills and revenue
At its peak, a focus on skills can be strategically aligned with programmes to generate revenue.
Internally, the application of capacity modelling to skills can drive revenue optimization by ensuring a business has the right resources to meet current and future demands most efficiently. From there, it can identify and develop the most valuable employees.
Extended throughout the supply chain, the approach means a business can train partners to improve business-to-business outcomes. Suppliers that are better trained to work with a company open the possibility for new services to be developed quicker, or for other issues such as sustainability to be handled better.
Externally a focus on skills means a business can design and sell courses, license content, or offer subscription-based learning, to create new, consistent revenue streams with external partners, customers and even competitors.
Conclusion
Bringing skills into better alignment with both business demands, and market opportunities turns human resources and skills capacity from an internal necessity to a strategic asset.
For businesses who have yet to capitalise on the existing skills they have, the internal and external represents a new frontier and phase for the growth of their business. The foundation for this evolution is an alignment of skills to outcomes, bringing balance back to business.
[1] As defined: Koyaanisqatsi | The Bureau of Linguistical Reality
[2] As cited: How to Measure the ROI of Your Training | eduMe
[3] See Skills Gap Statistics UK 2023 | Oxford Learning College
[4] See UK’s medium-sized firms most productive, but hindered by inability to invest and staff burnout | Grant Thornton
[5] As reported – Learning Management System (LMS) Market Size, Share & Analysis Report 2030
