Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc., a leader in talent management solutions, released the results of its 2022 global research study focused on organizational trends in the skills development landscape.
The report (Coping with the Global Skills Shortage: A Path Through Challenging Times) is the second comprehensive analysis of global skills by the Cornerstone People Research Lab.
The gap between employees and employers
The report found that nearly half of employers surveyed ranked skills and talent shortages among their top three most pressing concerns over the next three years and identified a strong positive correlation between overall business performance and the quality of new support for employers. skills and development opportunities offered to employees.
The global research survey assessed the views of 1,800 employees and more than 800 business leaders in North America (including Mexico), Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Similar to the questions asked in the 2020 study, this latest survey compared how each group perceived their organizations’ investment in skills initiatives, their ability to influence talent and business outcomes, and how well they responded to the pandemic.
The 2020 study found a 30% lack of trust between employers who believed they were providing skills to employees and employees who expected to further develop their skills with help from employers.
Based on 2022 survey data, this gap actually widened for mid- and low-performing organizations. While employers’ confidence in their ability to understand and meet their needs increased in the recent report, employee confidence actually decreased by five points with only 55% of employees saying their skills development organization was a priority.
“The latest research from the Cornerstone People Research Lab demonstrates how organizations and their people continue to see skills development as an increasingly important part of successfully navigating their shared future,” said Himanshu Palsule, CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand.
“Unfortunately, there remains a widening gap between how organizations view their ability to deliver on skills development and how employees experience it. That’s why Cornerstone OnDemand continues to accelerate talent learning and innovation at the intersection of technology, data and people experience. Our goal is to enable our clients to better design and connect their learning and training programs to the needs of people and business outcomes.”
Key Research Findings
In many cases, the pandemic has exacerbated or accelerated problems that were already limiting organizational capacity to adapt and change. Long-term talent shortages and new challenges, such as the rapid pace of digital transformation, take over and threaten many organizations’ ability to execute, grow and innovate. Some key findings are as follows:
– Employers and employees are not fully aligned on the current skills approach. There continues to be a significant confidence gap in the ability to develop new skills between employers and employees. Not only has this gap persisted since 2020, but it has, on average, widened.
– Employees do not trust their companies to prioritize skills in the future. Research revealed that only 55% of employees trust prioritization of new skills development opportunities to occur.
– The skills confidence gap narrowed or widened depending on the strength of the organization. High-performing organizations (HPOs) had a much smaller gap between employees and employers. HPOs not only prioritized skills development at a much higher level than their peers, but their employees also agreed with them, with only an 11% difference between employer and employee perception. Meanwhile, Laggards (underperforming organizations) not only rated their prioritization of skills development much lower, but fewer than 20% of employees in those organizations said skills development is an important goal—a gap in 42%.
High-Performing Organizations Provide Guidance
The report showed that leading organizations are leading the way. 72% of HPOs globally reported that they have already started prioritizing their investments in skills development within the next year. Given the trend line of HPOs outperforming their peers in organizational results and employee confidence in new training initiatives, this increased focus provides guidance for other organizations globally.
The way to follow
To reduce the skills confidence gap between employees and employers and address uncertainty, the 2022 report, , outlines practical steps organizations can take to build high-impact future skills, such as:
– Predict the future skills that the organization will need and identify potential skills gaps among employees.
– Integrate smart skills technology into other professional development tools that the organization is already using or should use.
– Foster a learning culture that prioritizes skills development and empowers people to grow.
– Create strategies and deliver more relevant, modern and personalized learning content to employees.
– Adopt an internal hiring mindset to encourage skill development and career growth.
Finally, César Ortuño, vice president of Cornerstone OnDemand for Mexico and Latin America, shared the following perspective on the way forward in the organizational evolution of companies.
“To prepare their workforce for the future, organizations increasingly need to take a skills-based approach to learning and talent, identifying what skills gaps exist, what skills will be needed in the future, and a relevant and engaging path that enable your people to further develop those skills effectively.”
“That’s exactly what we do at Cornerstone OnDemand, we build our solutions with skills-centric technology to help our clients create fully connected people experiences in which skills are a common language of professional development and success,” concluded Ortuño.
To learn more about the 2022 report findings and to view the full version of the report, visit .
Methodology
Cornerstone OnDemand partnered with The Starr Conspiracy to survey 815 leaders from organizations around the world with 500 or more employees. These leaders included founders and owners, C-level executives, presidents, directors, and management professionals. Simultaneously, The Starr Conspiracy surveyed 1,800 full-time, part-time, and/or contract employees working for organizations around the world with 500 or more employees. These employees comprised managerial positions and individual contributors. Between November 2021 and December 2021, respondents were asked about their attitudes towards skills development and talent mobility.
About Cornerstone OnDemand
Cornerstone OnDemand empowers the future-ready workforce with adaptable HR solutions designed to bring technology, data and content together to inspire a growing, agile and successful workplace for all. With an AI-powered experiential system designed for the contemporary workforce, it helps organizations modernize their learning and development experience, deliver the most relevant content from anywhere, accelerate talent and career mobility, and establish skills like universal language of growth and success in business. Cornerstone OnDemand serves more than 6,000 customers and 75 million users, in 180 countries and 50 languages.
