The need to bring in skills to innovate and ultimately lead the story around IoT, 5G, Cloud, Software Defined Networks, AI and Big Data has had to be balanced against the need to maintain and support the legacy connectivity and infrastructure business – and its millions of customers. The result is that the workforce has remained heavily weighted towards engineers and contact centre agents, and telcos are having to face up to a huge skills shortage. Left unaddressed, this will have a seismic impact on the industry.
Understanding the Skills Gap
The skills gap in the workforce is a significant area of concern, with the WEF research suggesting that 75% of telcos cite a local skills gap as the main barrier to innovation, and that the average telco is already looking to reskill 50% of its workforce in order to be future-ready. Within the UK, the challenge is more focused around understanding and managing skills. Whilst HR leaders face a wide range of challenges in this area, the need to improve the use of data and insight is mission-critical:
Telcos must invest in analysis and AI solutions to help them turn their data into actionable intelligence if they are to meet their business objectives and deliver a workforce that is ready for the future.
Creating a growth mindset
Learnability is repeatedly described as the must have employee characteristic of the future. It refers to both the ability and the desire to learn new skills, and the willingness to adapt to change.
According to Capita’s research, 96% of telcos want to build skills internally rather than buy skills externally. Indeed, learnability is seen as key to creating the future workforce, with nearly two thirds (63%) agreeing it is fundamental to increased innovation and creativity.
It also works to futureproof the workforce: recruit and retain the people will the best ability to learn, adapt and reskill, and you don’t need to worry about what future knowledge you need, because your workforce can learn, adapt and deliver, regardless. This is why learnability is so relevant.
However, according to the Capita research, only 48% of the workforce currently display high levels of learnability. That leaves telcos with what must feel like an impossible task to address. The research revealed some wider challenges:
Most interestingly, for a sector that wants to build skills internally, only a quarter prioritise promoting internally where possible.
There is then a disconnection between the clear ambition of the HR teams to deliver the right workforce for the future – one that will deliver on business performance, and the support they are getting from the board.
This may be because of perceived lack of tangible ROI. Yet evidence suggests that investment in learning is clearly linked to increased productivity. Again, investment in the right data tools and analysis will help demonstrate the ROI for the company and secure future funds.