Let’s Rethink How America’s Workforce Is Trained

Unemployment is at an all-time low and job openings across a number of industries outnumber qualified applicants, with an expected 85.2 million job openings expected to go unfilled worldwide by 2030, according to the Korn Ferry Institute. Given the skills gap, how the workforce is trained should be re-imagined, especially as education costs continue to rise. Human resources can help firms establish a talent pipeline that relies less on career fairs and more on ongoing educational opportunities to fill key hires and invest in these individuals to retain them. Five ways to feed this pipeline include looking for nontraditional applicants via training programs, maintaining a network of educators, upskilling the team by filling knowledge gaps and giving employees regular opportunities to improve their skills and learn new ones, advocating for productive policy changes to help people obtain the financial aid they need for short-term opportunities and providing incentives to employees to continue their education, such as covering some of the costs. Businesses and HR need to think creatively to keep their pipelines full of talented workers.

Read the full article on Forbes.com.