What is workforce development? How to train in order to close skill gaps

Workforce development is a solution to a skills gap that can jeopardize the continuity of a company.

Today’s companies understand that investing in workforce development is critical to success.

Identifying and filling skills and competency gaps is key to attracting and retaining talent, as well as improving productivity and profitability.

As opposed to short-term team training, workforce development provides a structured professional development framework that benefits both the employee and the company.

In this article, you will learn what workforce development is and how it can help you close skill gaps.

What is workforce development?

Workforce development is a plan for continuous improvement of employees’ skills that enables them to continue to develop over the long term, while helping the company to achieve its personal development objectives and remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Workforce development programs focus on enhancing the capabilities of a company’s human capital, allowing it to cultivate talent and not rely solely on new hires for highly skilled teams.

As such, these plans help to create, maintain and retain the talent necessary to consolidate the economic prosperity of workers and the success of the company.

For the former, they provide a realistic career plan, adapted to the market; and companies, for their part, increase their chances of growth.

For all these reasons, it is one of the best ways to combat the skills gap and train to close those gaps.

Workforce development example

With the intention of deepening the workforce development meaning, take a look at the following example.

Imagine that a company involved in an assembly line production wants to improve the technical skills of its teams. It has several options:

1. Use mentoring, i.e. have an employee with technical expertise train employees in specific skills that are needed immediately.
2. Train teams to acquire the necessary technical skills.
3. Collaborate with a technical school to develop a much broader, long-term continuing education program that supports ongoing development.

The third option corresponds to the workforce development perspective, and gives the company the opportunity to train future leaders, consolidating the continuity of the projects.

Workforce development vs employee training programs

The main difference between workforce development and employee training programs lies in the time perspective.

While workforce development seeks the professional development of an employee in the long term and in a more holistic manner, employee training programs focus on improving the immediate skills, competencies and resources that an employee needs to fulfill for his or her role.

In this way, both perspectives combined are strategic for a company.

What are workforce skills?

Workforce skills are the skills and aptitudes acquired through learning that reinforce employees’ academic knowledge and that they need, in order to perform their jobs successfully.

Among them, you can find:

• Hard skills. Technical skills learned through training.
• Soft skills. Interpersonal skills, innate or developed throughout a person’s life through experience.

Each company will need a specific set of skills to fill specific jobs. For example, healthcare technicians, in addition to their specialization, will have to be trained in healthcare informatics.

In any case, there are what are known as power skills, skills that organizations are increasingly demanding in order to respond to the uncertainty of the markets.

These include emotional intelligence, critical thinking, creativity and cognitive flexibility, among others.

Why is workforce development important?

Workforce development ensures that companies have a skilled workforce that responds successfully to market needs.

In turn, these workers increase their employability and face competitiveness successfully.

In addition to these benefits, there are other advantages for both companies and employees, such as the following:

• It offers stability by deploying continuous programs to meet long-term objectives.
• It favors the creation of career advancement opportunities.
• It boosts the economic growth of communities by providing a skilled workforce, which can attract new companies.
• It increases employee engagement and satisfaction, improving productivity and reducing talent turnover.
• It reduces recruitment budgets, as the company has an internal talent pool.

How to train in order to close skill gaps with workforce development?

By now, you have seen how workforce development can help you close skill gaps. Keep in mind that this is increasingly necessary because of the discrepancy between the demand for qualified talent and the scarce availability of this talent.

To implement this type of long-term continuous training program in your company, it is necessary, first of all, that you carry out a thorough audit of the objectives in relation to the skills and competencies you have.

Once the gaps in your teams have been detected, you can implement a workforce development program from 4 perspectives:

1. Formal training. These are previously programmed trainings and trainings, with a predefined structure, and which are given by instructors or specialized personnel.
2. Informal training. The acquisition of new competencies and skills is done through observation and practice within the company.
3. Work experience. Employees acquire new skills over time and through their own experiences. Here, horizontal and vertical career growth come into play as options for internal promotion.
4. Evaluations. Evaluating employees is key to monitoring their development, detecting shortcomings and working on their career plan.

Throughout this process, it is crucial that you actively listen to your teams, that they are the ones who take the helm of their development so that you can synchronize their objectives with those of your project.

To help you, Smowltech has developed a series of proctoring plans, innovative tools that adapt to the needs of your online supervision.Request a free demo and discover how you can boost the development of your teams.