5 trends shaping skills development

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To face the changing future of work, employers may need to redouble their efforts to address skills gaps, according to a May 28 report from CompTIA, an IT training and certification vendor.

More than 1,000 HR, learning and development, and IT professionals were surveyed for the report; of the HR and IT leaders surveyed, 83% said that skills improvement is “imperative” within their organizations.

“Companies were already struggling to maximize their ability to reap benefits from digital transformation,” Seth Robinson, vice president of industry research at CompTIA, said in a statement. “Now, the pace of change, and the risk of falling behind, has accelerated.”

In its report, CompTIA flagged five trends driving talent development right now.

1. Building skills is a top priority

Digital skills are, of course, heavily prioritized for development, CompTIA noted, as jobs increasingly require digital fluency thanks in part to artificial intelligence tools. But pressure has also increased to obtain skilled talent — and amid a shallow external pool of candidates, more employers are turning to internal development programs to make up the difference, the report said.

Notably, most leaders surveyed by CompTIA said they expect budgets to either increase or not change for development of many in-demand skills, including cybersecurity, data analytics, digital fluency and project management.

2. AI is not the only skills gap

In CompTIA’s survey, leaders expressed concern that AI is “crowding out” other skill needs.

“It is easy to lose sight of the fact that AI is best utilized in conjunction with other skills,” the report said.

Outside of a slew of AI-related skills — including data analysis, automation and prompt building — employees still need other skills to make those skills possible, CompTIA said. Other experts have pointed to “human” skills, such as judgment, critical thinking and decisionmaking, as key development areas even in the AI age.

3. Productivity drives development

The top motivation for developing employee skills remains productivity, per CompTIA’s report, but employee engagement and retention were top goals specifically for HR professionals.

But workers are also stressed about the recently tightening labor market, CompTIA said, heightening burnout risks. 

“HR professionals and IT leaders are in lockstep when using workforce development programs as a way to combat stress, anxiety, and other ingredients that could lead to low engagement,” the report said.

4. Skills-based hiring and development may not be hitting the mark

Much has been written on the positive ROI of skills-based talent programs, but execution remains difficult to achieve. 

While most programs focus on skills-based hiring by dropping degree requirements and widening searches, even that “has met limited results, as dropping requirements has not greatly changed the mix of talent that gets hired,” the report said.

Only 34% of companies surveyed said they have an organization-wide program for reskilling or upskilling current workers, and many of those programs may not be personalized, meaning employers “are attacking the skills problem with a wide distribution of training that may or may not solve critical needs,” according to the report.

5. Skill validation is increasingly key — but not easy

In a skills-based talent environment, skill assessment matters, and credentials have long been touted as a way to prompt further adoption of skills-based approaches, CompTIA said. 

“The primary obstacle here is that four-year degrees have long served as a proxy for a wide variety of skills, and there is a learning curve for replacing that historical credential with a collection of other options,” the report noted.

Managers, too, must be trained to understand the content and value of certifications, especially as the space becomes “crowded with offerings of varying quality,” CompTIA said.