Readying the workforce for tomorrow

For enterprise business leaders across the globe, the increasing digital skills gap that is facing the UK workforce cannot be ignored. With growing pressures to quickly adapt to AI, automation, and digitisation, employees need to keep their digital skills up to date to leverage rapid technological advancements.

The benefits are clear. There is undoubtedly a direct correlation between continuous learning and employee satisfaction and engagement, which in turn generates a positive contribution to an organisation’s bottom line, and subsequently better staff acquisition and retention. Business leaders must act now – a firm commitment to upskilling is not a nice-to-have side-line, but rather an essential business objective.

Understanding priorities & culture

Managing tech talent and enhancing skills across the board is the role of the leadership team and must be aligned to an organisation’s corporate vision and strategy. At IBM, we have a culture of ‘lifelong learning’ to enable employees to take up training and development opportunities across the board. Creating a culture or curiosity and collaboration from within is key to uncovering new efficiency gains and boosting productivity beyond expectations.  

Understanding adaptability

Recently, we asked 5,000 business leaders what core skills they look for in the workforce and technical, digital and data skills featured prominently in their responses. However, the number-one skill that business leaders coveted was unrelated to a candidate’s ability to navigate code.  Adaptability – a willingness to be open, flexible, and agile in approach – was the most sought-after skill on business leaders’ wish lists. Business Leaders consented that employees’ AQ or “adaptability quotient” is a better measure of their ability to thrive in any business environment than their qualifications.

Reskilling for tomorrow

We come into a new role with a finite amount of key skills, which can become obsolete if left untended. We unveiled a ground-breaking global commitment to provide skills opportunities for the jobs of tomorrow to 30 million people by 2030. Our SkillsBuild platform allows users to benefit from a wide range of online coaching and learning to inspire them to be their best. One such inspiring story from the UK came from Men Gurung, a former service man with the Brigade of Gurkhas. Men used SkillsBuild to fulfil a long-held ambition to work in cybersecurity. We signed the Armed Forces Covenant in 2017 and have long been committed to helping former reservists forge successful post-Forces careers in the workplace and Men is just one example of this.

Building the workforce of the future

A burgeoning skills portfolio drives greater employability. Enterprises committed to developing diverse workforces reap the kind of rich dividends that come from learning from and collaborating with individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. We believe that everyone deserves a fair chance to create the career they desire, regardless of socio-economic circumstance. IBM is passionate about creating lasting social change ensuring equal opportunities for often underserved populations e.g. those currently on Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment, school leavers, as well as apprentices, those re-entering the workplace via returnships, and long-time workers alike. We do this in partnership with charitable organisations including City Gateway in London, Hampshire County Council, Movement to Work, the Government’s Kickstart initiative and more. We run onboarding programmes both virtually and in person, ensuring that our teams become fluent and creative in their use of a range of collaboration tools.

In conclusion, most of us accept that technology is once again disrupting every industry, at a rate that we have not seen before.  The winners in this race of accelerated transformation will be those who are able to innovate at pace and scale, able to actively champion change and those with the most skilled and curious workforce. 

Ultimately, the responsibility for skills transformation must be shared between the business and its employees. Technology is changing, industries are changing, and jobs are changing; individuals must seek to regenerate and reinvent themselves to forge fulfilling career paths. But it is in all business leaders’ interests to champion a culture that drives growth and change.

Now more than ever, it is imperative to be mindful of the future of the workforce. Upskilling presents a unique opportunity across enterprise businesses across the board to drive wins in terms of productivity, satisfaction, culture and more, that each contribute to the bottom line.

This blog was written by Sreeram Visvanathan. Sreeram Visvanathan is Chief Executive of IBM UK and Ireland (UKI), a position taken after almost two decades within the IBM Company in a variety of global management positions. In his role as IBM UKI General Manager, Sreeram is responsible for business operations, driving revenue growth, client satisfaction, and employee engagement across the UK and Ireland. As one of IBM’s largest international operations, the UK and Ireland has significant core capabilities in hybrid cloud, AI, blockchain, data and analytics and quantum computing, which empower clients to embark on their digital transformation journeys.