There’s money to be made here:
As the Obama administration shines a light on the training and skills workers will need for the jobs of tomorrow, a new report shows that U.S. employers continue to struggle with an ill-prepared workforce, finding new hires lack crucial basic and applied skills.
For the most part, employer-sponsored readiness training is not successfully correcting these deficiencies, according to the report, The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training, produced by Corporate Voices for Working Families, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), The Conference Board, and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
“The results of this study demonstrate how critical it is for companies to be more strategic and focused on efforts such as providing internships and working in partnership with community colleges on workforce readiness initiatives to prepare new entrants before they enter the workplace,” says Donna Klein, Executive Chair, Corporate Voices for Working Families, which partnered with The Conference Board, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) on the report and its underlying survey of U.S. employers.
“It is a losing strategy for employers to try to fill the workforce readiness gap on the job. They need to be involved much sooner to prepare new employees to succeed,” Klein said.
I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity to outsource a portion of the on-boarding process that is not employer-specific to close these gaps. The survey data indicates that employers identify the following deficiencies:
- critical thinking
- creativity
- ethics awareness
- social responsibility
- basic skills deficiencies such as reading comprehension, writing, and math
The summary of the report is available as a PDF as well as the full report.
Tags: analytical skills, Business, creativity, development, Education, ethics, math, reading, social responsibility, training, workplace, writing
