Writing for the Harvard Business School series “Managing the Future of Work,” Joseph Fuller argues that “usiness leaders must champion an employer-led skills-development system, in which they bring the type of rigor and discipline to sourcing middle-skills talent that they historically applied to their materials supply chains.” One example of a strategy that focuses on employer leadership is the U.S. This mismatch makes it difficult for individuals to find jobs and for employers to find appropriately trained workers.Įlizabeth Mann Levesque Friday, December 6, 2019Įmployer leadership is a key part of addressing this mismatch. The term “skills gap” describes a fundamental mismatch between the skills that employers rely upon in their employees, and the skills that job seekers possess. To contextualize the posts in this series, each of which focuses on a particular employer’s experience, it is worth beginning with a discussion of the skills gap and some of the challenges that employers face in addressing this gap and related issues. The role of employers in addressing the skills gap As such, exploring how employers experience and respond to these challenges is a valuable part of the larger conversation on workforce development. Engaging in this process may in fact be a matter of survival, given the large-scale changes that are reshaping the workforce environment. Nonetheless, employers play an important role in identifying challenges and subsequently creating, piloting, and refining innovative solutions.
In addition, employer perspectives are just one dimension we should consider when addressing workforce development challenges. First, this series is not meant to provide a representative or comprehensive overview of the “employer perspective” in the U.S. Several caveats are in order before proceeding. What kind of success have you had in terms of workforce development, and what factors have been important to this success?.What challenges have you encountered with respect to recruiting, training, and retaining appropriately educated and skilled employees?.How are technological changes shaping your workforce needs?.Each interview explores questions such as: Through interviews with four different manufacturing employers-ranging in size from under 1,000 employees to over 41,000 employees-this “ Employer Perspectives on Workforce Development” series offers a window into the challenges that employers are encountering as well as the innovative solutions they are pursuing with respect to workforce development in an era of rapid technological change.
In this context, it is important to understand employer perspectives on hiring, training, and retraining a skilled workforce. The skills gap poses a pressing policy problem, and employers are among those on the frontlines of this battle.
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