Companies Must Act Fast to Address Skills Gap, Future of Work Report 2021 Finds
Companies around the world must take urgent action to respond to rapid changes in the world of work and address a global talent gap, which is set to widen to 160 million employees in 2025 in the tech sector alone, according to the annual Future of Work report.
The report, titled The A3 Revolution, analyses how work has shifted to an “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere” model, examining the three megatrends of flexible working hours, new forms of employment that are replacing full time contracts, and a lack of geographical constraints.
The document was published by Talent Alpha (a platform that connects over 650 tech companies all around the world, allowing them to share talent in a cloud) and its international partners including EPAM Systems, Everest Group, Global Sourcing Association, Global Technology & Business Services Council, Open Assembly, Stratigens, Sourcing Change and Tolson Consulting.
Close to 86% of enterprises consider talent shortages a key barrier to achieving their transformation plans, according to the Everest Group, a global research firm. The change in the way people work, and in their expectations connected with the A3 Revolution are widening the talent gap, which is increasing attrition, lowering engagement, limiting innovation and eating up companies’ budgets.
At the same time, the emerging solutions connected with working from Anytime, Anyplace and Anywhere can allow companies to interact with specialists in new, more satisfying ways and deliver new solutions for sourcing and sharing skills.
“Like any revolution, the world of Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere work offers tremendous challenges, but also great opportunities for the companies that are bold enough to seize them,” said Talent Alpha CEO Przemek Berendt. “Regarding the talent gap, it’s time to face the truth that the market is fundamentally unbalanced, and will remain so. Companies need to look for new solutions: reskilling and upskilling to build supply; automation to help reduce the demand; increasing pay to bring the two curves closer together; and finding new models that will make the market more efficient.”
Among these new solutions, Talent Exchange could be crucial. Human Cloud platforms can offer new methods to source and share skills, providing a way for large enterprises to connect with other companies or smaller providers all over the globe who have unused capacity.
Once companies have understood and embraced the A3 revolution, they can begin looking for talent from Anywhere, in an outsourcing, freelancing or enterprise gateway marketplace model. Organizations are starting to acquire talent from geographies where they’ve never been active, relying on tools that offer data on costs, working conditions and risks for locations around the globe.
“Using talent intelligence we can provide companies with the whole picture, combining workforce and workplace data so that they can plan smarter talent acquisition, smarter workforce design and smarter real estate strategy,” said Alison Ettridge, CEO at Stratigens, the only labour market analytics platform that combines talent intelligence, business intelligence and workforce planning.
The A3 Revolution also offers strategies for companies to address the Great Resignation, the high rate of skilled employees leaving full-time jobs for other forms of work – strategies that will become a permanent part of how enterprises do business.
In addition to practical advice for companies grappling with the shortage of skills, the report also includes tips for individuals seeking to chart a career path in a world of Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere work.
The entire report can downloaded free of charge at: https://www2.stratigens.com/a3-work-revolution
ENDS