Despite rising unemployment, skills shortages remain in many sectors. Can/should organisations be more proactive in managing the careers of their workers, ensuring they pursue sustainable careers and acquire relevant skills to keep pace with a changing labour market?

I believe that both individuals and organisations need to be proactive in managing careers at a time of rising unemployment and changing demands within the labour market or both will become ‘stuck’.  Managing skills and careers as a partnership within a dynamic internal and external labour market is the smart way to achieve higher capability, engagement and performance and, for individuals, to protect their marketability and their employability.  Organisations have a need not only for company specific technical skills but for leadership and core skills such as communication, teamwork, project and people management - all of which are valuable transferrable skills.  So, there needs to be a ‘deal’ between organisations who have a responsibility to publish what skills are needed, facilitate the acquisition and reward of these, and individuals who have a responsibility to be self aware, to know their strengths, to develop sustainable skills and put them to best use.      

The simplistic answer is no:  career management and the acquisition of skills, post statutory education, should be an individual’s responsibility.  However, at Outlook Care (a care and support provider to vulnerable adults), for frontline services, we look for people who have attained a basic good education and who then match our Values base and have attitudes and behaviours upon which we can build.  My theory is that you can pretty much teach someone anything from this base but it is much more difficult to change attitudes and behaviours: values which were set in childhood.  We need to ensure our frontline employees’ knowledge and skills are regularly refreshed for statutory training and will then look at their continuing professional development using a variety of interventions from “sitting with Nellie” in the workplace to formal classroom teaching.  Learning has to be either a statutory requirement or designed to equip employees with the skills and knowledge to meet the changing needs of the people who use our services.  For me this is the extent to which a social care employer can go towards managing an employee’s career and ensuring they keep pace with changes in the social care labour market.  A conversation for another time might be the extent to which we provide opportunities for people wishing for promotion!      

The challenges of the current economic environment mean there is a danger that organisations focus on the immediate imperative of cost and resource control, losing sight of the need to build for the longer-term, and ensuring they are in a strong position when there is an improvement in market conditions. Interventions can be made at different points along the career pathway, including entry level arrangements, auditing current skills against future business needs, identifying practical ways of embedding skills development within day-to-day activities and internal talent management programmes. The ambitions for future public service provision and delivery, with an emphasis on choice, innovation and entrepreneurialism, will not be realised without the development of new skill sets. And in managing major organisational change, employers need to help displaced workers make positive career transitions, assisting in maintaining staff morale and motivation both for those who are leaving and those who remain. A failure to take a pro-active approach to this issue is likely to exacerbate the skills and capability gaps now being experienced to the detriment of individuals, organisations and the broader economy.      

In the future labour market, it is likely that knowledge industries particularly information technology, education and health services will contribute to increasing demand for highly skilled employees.  This is not a UK only phenomenon but characteristic of all the developed countries. In China too skills shortages are hampering their ability to expand in certain industries. People with particular skills such as accountancy and finance are already in short supply in China. The global competition for these knowledge workers is likely to be intense in the future and there are already signs that this may be hampering our own economy. For where there are skills shortages, there is not only reduced competitiveness but also rising wages and with rising wages can come wage push inflation. One response to this is in the future is to manage and retain your existing talent through career management and training. If you think this is too costly just think of the investment you put into your employees’ development, only to see them going to a competitor either here or overseas.