Industries worldwide are facing the heat of a growing skills gap, given the need for rapidly evolving skill sets and an increasing mismatch of talent and job demands.
The lack of necessary skills is a critical problem for mid-market enterprises especially, as they have sophisticated needs in a number of areas but are still left with a lack of qualified employees, even during periods of relatively high unemployment.
A skills gap negatively impacts businesses by lowering staff productivity, thus shrinking sales and profitability, while increasing a business’ inability to keep up with their competitors. In this era of digital disruption, the IT skills gap can prevent organizations from transforming fast enough, which can hurt the survival of the business.
Despite knowing the implications of the gap, most companies do not have a plan or a strategy in place to bridge the gap. This results in stalled growth, stressed employees and a lack of innovation, reports CompTIA.
For companies to survive the skills shortage and continue to grow, they’ll have to take a new approach toward upskilling employees to remain competitive. Here are 5 elements to tackling the skills gap effectively.
1. Know your story: Have an action plan
Enterprises must devise a long-term strategic plan to address the skills gap by rectifying the root causes and outline the foundation required for improvements to take place. Employers should identify the skills to focus on and the gaps to close, then investigate the solutions likely to resolve multiple problems.
2. Prioritize cybersecurity
In this era of cyber attacks, the shortage of cybersecurity professionals around the globe has never been more acute — a workforce gap of 3 million professionals worldwide has been reported. This shortage places organizations with low security budgets at risk. How organizations allocate their budgets will affect how they address the skills gap.
3. Encourage key staff to obtain security certifications
To grow and embrace disruption, organizations need people with the right skills, up-to-date knowledge, and evolving experience. Cybersecurity professionals are some of the most highly sought-after individuals across industries. But due to demand surpassing the supply, seasoned professionals are increasingly difficult to hire. In such situations, organizations should encourage current key staff to learn and undergo security training through programs or certifications that help keep the employee’s skills current.
4. Build repeatable processes
Bridge the gap by automating processes. Mid-market enterprises with budget constraints can implement automation and free up the precious time of human analysts to tackle more strategic challenges.
Also, determine and document your company’s cybersecurity protocols. Use the training sessions to formalize policies to meet current security needs and the demands of future protection needs based on changing threats, requirements, and technologies.
5. Rely on a Trusted Partner for help
Look for a tool that is smart enough to bridge the skills gap. Kaseya provides a comprehensive IT management console that eliminates a significant degree of manual effort with automation and enables complete endpoint protection with VSA. You can control your entire IT infrastructure from a single console and reduce the viability of complexity.
The IT skills gap will take time to close, but organizations can make headway by plugging their internal skills gap and using their current talent to achieve greater workplace success.
Watch our webinar 5 Ways to Close the Skills Gap to understand the various IT skills shortages and learn how to address them effectively.
