With staff coming and going in many industries across the UK, lots of businesses are focusing on recruitment and sourcing the best talent on the market. However, often the greatest talent is a lot closer to home than you might think. Your workforce is the most valuable asset that holds the power to combat staffing problems.
Skill-based jobs are increasingly in demand or specialist roles are often extremely hard to fill. This results in a lengthy wait for a decent candidate, but when a good recruit turns up, they might expect to be paid more than you are willing since their skills are so in demand.
Does this mean re-skilling works to fix staffing problems? Could it be the key to getting back on the right track?
One of the main benefits is that your staff become more skilled, knowledgeable and efficient which can reap huge perks including increased productivity, job satisfaction and greater motivation. As a result of becoming more skilled, team members will also need less supervision, perform better and become multi-disciplined. This can prove a huge advantage as your employees can take on more responsibilities, or supervise others.
The other major benefit is that it can be a cost effective method to develop your workforce and explore new avenues. A report from the Financial Services, Skills Commission (FSSC) and PwC UK found that you can save nearly £50,000 through re-skilling. This same data found that re-skilling a financial services employee costs on average £31,800. On the other hand, the ‘redundancy and rehire’ approach carries an average cost of £80,875, the data revealed.
Re-skilling also has a positive effect on retention, as staff feel more valued within your organisation and content within their job role. Those who have undergone training with your company are more likely to stay with the business and become better engaged and more motivated as previously mentioned.
If you’re planning on reskilling it’s important you take the time to plan a course, otherwise, you’ll likely run into scheduling and training issues. Also, it’s essential you consider whether retraining on its own is enough, sometimes a mixture of reskilling and hiring new candidates is needed for larger organisations with multiple levels. Will the newly skilled employee be happy with a new job, or will they be under more pressure? If you fail to address such concerns, you could easily find your recently-trained employee poached by a competitor.
Whatever your approach is - recruiting, re-skilling, or a mixture of the two, be sure to explore different approaches and don’t make quick, emotive decisions.
