ong before there was COVID-19 the world faced the challenge of a global skills gap. Employers were challenged with meeting production needs with jobs left unfilled, as workers struggled to meet the necessary skill requirements. Worse, we faced the Future of Work (FoW) and the tech revolution, that threatened to make the gap larger. Then came the pandemic.
How Will Things Change After COVID-19?
This question is on everyone’s mind and, while I do not pretend to have all the answers, I think we can surmise at least this much about life after COVID-19 – we are not going back to “normal.” I have come to believe that is okay because, for many, “normal” was not working anyway.
“Normal” had our work/life balance in shambles. We were already facing tremendous change and uncertainty. A globally competitive environment meant working at a fever pitch. Shifting market needs required folks to pivot on a dime. Reports of surging workplace stress had become common.
COVID-19 has complicated things, to say the least, but the business landscape was already complicated. Meeting the global skills gap just got more challenging as we face the need to re-skill millions of Americans in the wake of the pandemic. This new, larger skills gap is a bright light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
Things will get faster. Technology adoption and the FoW will happen sooner than we had planned. The pace of change will never be this slow again. We will not go back to normal, because normal was not good enough to meet the challenges of the future … and thanks to COVID-19, the future is now. According to Forbes, “Coronavirus … might be the great catalyst for business transformation. In fact, where we once saw the future of work unfolding over years, we now believe that with coronavirus as an accelerant, everything we’ve predicted about the future of work will unfold in months.”
How Do We Cope with All the Post COVID Disruption?
In a post-pandemic future, we will need to be more open-minded. We will need to become nimbler, faster to adopt new technology, and able to lead our organizations in doing so. We will need to be able to take a risk, willing to fail, learn, and try again in finding a new, better “normal” for ourselves and for those we serve. We need to be willing to disrupt ourselves lest we be disrupted by our competitors.
The starting point to close the gap will lie in creating more adaptive humans—beginning with ourselves. Authoritative sources like Indeed and LinkedIn cite “adaptability” among the most in-demand skills today. They are right. We can (and should) learn to better adapt.
Research suggests each of us has a sort of “resilience set point” for how we tend to cope with change and bounce back from disruption. It is rooted in personality traits like our openness to new experience, our confidence in our own abilities and our motivation to achieve. While our set point is rooted in our genetics, it is also shaped by our experiences—meaning resilient behaviors can be shaped and expanded—they can be learned.
An individual’s natural set point is also influenced by the environment they work in (think our organizational culture). Agile organizations create an environment where workers can better cope. What I call “The Six Critical Traits of Agile Organizations” includes the presence of visionary leadership, collaborative decision-making, social support and an attitude that sees failure as a learning experience (rather than a performance issue).
So, solving the skills gap in a post-COVID-19 world will start with solving the skills gap in each of us, and that begins with re-skilling our abilities to work at the speed of change.
Leaders need to cultivate a culture that rewards innovation, offers psychological safety for risk-takers and engages each individual in achieving an aspirational vision that they can believe in.
Individuals can start with an honest appraisal of their own coping skills and setting a learning plan to build on areas of weakness. Managers should objectively assess how their culture may be supporting (or hindering) future success.
This pandemic has been devastating, but there is opportunity here too. Building a version of normal that is a better one for ourselves, our families and those we serve will start with building a more adaptive version of ourselves and our organizations.
We can shape a better future, a better version of normal by building a better version of us. We should start now.
a global affairs media network
Build More Adaptive Humans to Minimize the Post-COVID-19 Skills Gap
August 5, 2020
We faced a global skills gap long before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has further complicated an already difficult roadmap forward.
L
ong before there was COVID-19 the world faced the challenge of a global skills gap. Employers were challenged with meeting production needs with jobs left unfilled, as workers struggled to meet the necessary skill requirements. Worse, we faced the Future of Work (FoW) and the tech revolution, that threatened to make the gap larger. Then came the pandemic.
How Will Things Change After COVID-19?
This question is on everyone’s mind and, while I do not pretend to have all the answers, I think we can surmise at least this much about life after COVID-19 – we are not going back to “normal.” I have come to believe that is okay because, for many, “normal” was not working anyway.
“Normal” had our work/life balance in shambles. We were already facing tremendous change and uncertainty. A globally competitive environment meant working at a fever pitch. Shifting market needs required folks to pivot on a dime. Reports of surging workplace stress had become common.
COVID-19 has complicated things, to say the least, but the business landscape was already complicated. Meeting the global skills gap just got more challenging as we face the need to re-skill millions of Americans in the wake of the pandemic. This new, larger skills gap is a bright light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
Things will get faster. Technology adoption and the FoW will happen sooner than we had planned. The pace of change will never be this slow again. We will not go back to normal, because normal was not good enough to meet the challenges of the future … and thanks to COVID-19, the future is now. According to Forbes, “Coronavirus … might be the great catalyst for business transformation. In fact, where we once saw the future of work unfolding over years, we now believe that with coronavirus as an accelerant, everything we’ve predicted about the future of work will unfold in months.”
How Do We Cope with All the Post COVID Disruption?
In a post-pandemic future, we will need to be more open-minded. We will need to become nimbler, faster to adopt new technology, and able to lead our organizations in doing so. We will need to be able to take a risk, willing to fail, learn, and try again in finding a new, better “normal” for ourselves and for those we serve. We need to be willing to disrupt ourselves lest we be disrupted by our competitors.
The starting point to close the gap will lie in creating more adaptive humans—beginning with ourselves. Authoritative sources like Indeed and LinkedIn cite “adaptability” among the most in-demand skills today. They are right. We can (and should) learn to better adapt.
Research suggests each of us has a sort of “resilience set point” for how we tend to cope with change and bounce back from disruption. It is rooted in personality traits like our openness to new experience, our confidence in our own abilities and our motivation to achieve. While our set point is rooted in our genetics, it is also shaped by our experiences—meaning resilient behaviors can be shaped and expanded—they can be learned.
An individual’s natural set point is also influenced by the environment they work in (think our organizational culture). Agile organizations create an environment where workers can better cope. What I call “The Six Critical Traits of Agile Organizations” includes the presence of visionary leadership, collaborative decision-making, social support and an attitude that sees failure as a learning experience (rather than a performance issue).
So, solving the skills gap in a post-COVID-19 world will start with solving the skills gap in each of us, and that begins with re-skilling our abilities to work at the speed of change.
Leaders need to cultivate a culture that rewards innovation, offers psychological safety for risk-takers and engages each individual in achieving an aspirational vision that they can believe in.
Individuals can start with an honest appraisal of their own coping skills and setting a learning plan to build on areas of weakness. Managers should objectively assess how their culture may be supporting (or hindering) future success.
This pandemic has been devastating, but there is opportunity here too. Building a version of normal that is a better one for ourselves, our families and those we serve will start with building a more adaptive version of ourselves and our organizations.
We can shape a better future, a better version of normal by building a better version of us. We should start now.
