According to the World Skills Economic Forum, more than half of the current workforce will require new skills by 2022 in order to maintain relevance in the workplace. That’s more than half of all employed people in the developed World, requiring training or reskilling in the next 18 months – 2 years. The tech and digital area is already a massive employment sector, worth over £90 billion more than the construction industry, double that of legal and accounting services and three times that of the sports and recreation, film, television and gambling industries combined.
The rapid progression of the digital age has seen more and more roles fall victim to automation, however that’s not to say there are less jobs. Simply, that the jobs that are now becoming relevant to the modern-day workplace have changed and require staff to have new and different skills. From cyber security, software testing, data analysis to web design and digital marketing, just to name a mere few. This is an incredibly exciting shift and now highlights employer ownership of skills, implementing employer defined occupational standards to rocket your business into the new age.
This presents a unique challenge for businesses, particularly in a progressive city like Worcester, as the pace at which the landscape of employment is moving is unlike anything seen before in human history.
However, pre-empting this, the government introduced a levy in 2016 specifically to fund skills development and apprenticeships in order to proactively meet the inevitable impending skills gap, which all employers can draw from to either employ new apprentices or develop existing staff. So what that basically means is that employers can access either a 95% or 100% funded apprenticeship programme, offering someone a fantastic new opportunity while also preserving the future of the company’s efficiency and output.
Here at TDM, we are an employer with a very simple mantra: do well by doing good. We treat our people well and retention is important to us, so for us if a role is to change in order to best serve the business and the learners we support then we would rather upskill the team we already have than recruit in existing expertise from outside whenever possible. Why? Our people are our business and a vital part of our internal and external ecosystem. We would never choose to break a team up or ruin a relationship when there is an opportunity for growth through change. Why not engage advanced level skillsets into your company through higher level and degree apprenticeships?
So our question to businesses in Worcester is quite simple: are you going to be reactive or proactive in this era of digital transformation? We’ve already chosen our side.
We’d love to help you choose yours.