Linked: Workers taking charge by upskilling
Don’t know if you saw this bit on LinkedIn recently, but there are definitely some interesting numbers here:
“A large-scale survey of the global workforce shows people appear to be taking more ownership of their career trajectories by sharpening their skills during the pandemic. According to the PwC Global survey of 32,500 workers, 40% say they have honed their digital skills during the crisis, and 77% say they are ‘”ready to learn new skills or completely re-train.” The upskilling would come in handy, since nearly half say they’re interested in eventually running their own businesses. A number of companies have rolled out upskilling initiatives as the pandemic accelerated the shift to tech.”
The first thing that jumped out at me is that I am very glad to see people taking learning into their own hands instead of waiting for their company to train them. I have always been a big fan of that. Your career, is your career, and you should act that way when it comes to learning new skills.
The second thing I thought was, if 77% of people are ready to learn new skills, as a company, you need to step up and offer opportunities for people to do just that. Very few people are going to be happy sitting and doing the same job for the next 20 years, and rightfully so, since we know that there’s almost no chance the jobs we do now, will still exist in the same way in as little as 5 years.
And, the last thing that jumped out at me? Nearly half are interested in running their own businesses? Are you prepared for that? For half of your employees to maybe become your competitors? It wouldn’t shock me. There’s a lot to be said for the flexibility of working for yourself. Choosing your projects, choosing your location, and your hours. Really, the one thing I keep seeing, over and over again, in interviews with experts and economists, is that health insurance is the one thing standing in the way. If we untied employment and health coverage, there might just be a massive overall in the U.S. labor market.
Are you doing enough to keep people interested in working for you, as opposed to themselves, if they can remove health coverage as a factor in staying?
Should you be thinking about that?
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/workers-taking-charge-by-upskilling-5036628/