Continuing education: The key to meeting short- and long-term market demands
Making lemonade from lemons … uncovering opportunities in chaos … there are many analogies for turning difficult circumstances into favorable ones.
With this in mind, what have we—individuals, businesses, educators—learned from going through one of the worst economies in history? It’s clear that the “rules” have shifted when it comes to employment.
What the past few years have taught us is employees with relevant skills and education are prized. Even after earning a degree, workers who want to stay abreast of their field can do so by taking advantage of educational opportunities that sharpen skills, provide the learning to help workers obtain professional licensing or certification or to break into a new field.
Continuing education is not just critical for employees—it impacts employers as well. Businesses report that there’s a shortfall of qualified candidates to fill skilled positions. A recent study by the University of Phoenix Research Institute details the current shortage in 2010 and how the situation is expected to worsen throughout the decade. The report predicts that the skilled workers gap will worsen because of increased workforce demands such as emerging technologies and globalization. These demands increase the skills required to do jobs. It’s estimated that by 2020, 63% of jobs will require a post-secondary education.
With a shortage of skilled workers, it’s clear we must foster a population that seeks education to remain prosperous and globally competitive. Educators, businesses and individuals must make quality education a priority in order to meet the demands of the market.
Bridging the skilled workers gap
As previously stated, the skills gap is a trend that is expected to continue into this decade, which will impact companies’ ability to do business. The most direct skills-gap filling strategy would be to focus specifically on workforce development. This also fosters a working relationship between education and business to develop a workforce that meets market demands.
During his presentation to the Harvard Business School’s Institute for Competitiveness and Strategy, Professor Michael Porter says targeting workforce development can make education more connected to market requirements. “A natural complement to competitiveness and trade promotion strategies, workforce development can help make education more responsive to economic needs" (Porter, 2002).
According to Porter, this type of demand-driven education is beneficial for a number of reasons: It responds to supply and demand and short- and long-term needs of the economy, and encourages lifelong learning.
Creating a continuing education mindset
According to Business Roundtable (BRT), an association of CEOs for top U.S. companies, the “… breadth and level of academic preparation needed to fill jobs is increasing, while the rate of change—as employees move from job to job and even industry to industry—is escalating rapidly.”
To combat quick-fire changes in the marketplace, the BRT challenges workers to look at learning as more than just a response to job loss, but as a lifelong responsibility critical to maintaining quality work.
Clearly, the economy is encouraging individuals toward continuing education as a way to stay competitive. If a shift in individual attitude toward education occurs, it can facilitate a change in the academic and business worlds as well—including how educational institutions deliver learning. Partnerships between educational institutions and businesses may form to match workers’ skill sets to the demands of their field.
Hire to train
Employers can fill open skilled positions by adjusting their hiring strategies. Many companies with unfilled, skilled positions point to a lack of available labor with experience (Bloxham, 2010).
In the past when there weren’t skilled candidates for jobs in emerging industries, companies trained employees to fill these gaps. Employees were hired on their intelligence and “trainability,” rather than direct prior experience. Bloxham suggests that it might be time to return to the “hire-to-train” strategy.
This adjustment in hiring strategies would require companies to accept a different set of rules in recruiting employees as well as a commitment to long-term training plans. These new strategies naturally encourage individuals and businesses to see continuing education as an essential part of workforce development—and this will deliver employees who are specifically trained to handle business requirements.
If businesses make education part of their corporate culture, employees may be more likely to embrace education as a means to make themselves more valuable to their employer and the market. This shift will help diminish the shortage of skilled workers and keep the U.S. economy and businesses globally competitive. That’s truly the silver lining around the dark cloud of our recent economic journey.
Resources
Inglish, P. (2007). Skilled labor shortage will cost U.S. manufacturers $7.4 billion. HubPages.
Porter, M. (2002, November). Workforce competitiveness in the global economy. Institute for Competitiveness and Strategy, Harvard Business School. Presentation materials.
