LinkedIn Report: 93% of Orgs Concerned About Retention

You’re not alone if you’ve been worried about employee retention.    Linkedin’s 7^th annual workplace learning report finds that 93% of organizations are concerned about retention too.  Quoting from TechRepublic:

The report makes a case for emphasizing learning and development, noting that 89% of learning and development professionals believe proactively building employee skills will help navigate the evolving future of work. While skill sets for jobs have changed by about 25% since 2015, that number will double by 2027, according to the report.

Interestingly, I spotted in a CompTIA report related data about skills.    A confidence gap, fueled by a real or perceived lack of skills, is the top factor discouraging job seekers from pursuing careers in technology, according to a Wednesday CompTIA report. More than half of the 1,000 respondents said tech jobs are beyond their reach.   Technology careers, including positions in IT support, cybersecurity, software, and data analysis, remain a top-five choice for job seekers, according to the survey, which CompTIA conducts biannually.

The National Skills Coalition released a report citing that 92% of jobs require digital skills, but one-third of workers surveyed do not have the foundational skills needed to enter these jobs.

All this with the US economy reporting retail solid sales numbers for January, rising 3% in January after November and December declines.    GDP grew 1.7% in January.      Economists agree that the job market is proving resilient too.  

Considering how much I talked about skills in the previous segment, the theme should be obvious.     I’m increasingly interested in the idea of apprenticeships in IT services and would posit that smaller providers likely can offer those opportunities.  

There’s the apparent training element to highlight for providers as well.   One of Amazon’s key insights is taking a cost center, such as their data center needs, and making them into profit centers, namely AWS.  Borrow a page from that playbook, and build training capabilities, not just for your employees but to offer digital skills training as a service.   There’s a market here.