Like flex time and casual Fridays, critical workforce and skill shortages are now part of daily life for many midsize and smaller organizations. This is not just a big company problem. Almost every firm has some initiatives in place attract and retain talent more effectively.

But are you paying attention to the full range of solutions available to you to address major skills gaps? Are you considering the best options to develop your future workforce, given automation and artificial intelligence trends? This is the second of four posts outlining a practical framework for recruiting and retaining the talent needed to grow your business. See my previous post (“Talent, Technology & Timing”) to make sure you’re focusing on the right problem.

Here are four general types of solutions for building and sustaining workforce capabilities – today and in the future. This is a useful way to organize your thinking about solutions and make sure you’re not overlooking something.

A. Tactics to find, develop and keep productive employees.

Most companies are now investing in more proactive efforts to recruit and retain talent. There are a lot of creative initiatives out there. For example, mid-size and smaller firms have gotten a lot more aggressive in using internships and apprenticeships to recruit, try out, and hire young talent. Cross training has become a more popular development and retention tool. And tactics like “stay interviews,” instead of the ever-popular-but-useless “exit interviews” are more prevalent.

To stay competitive, you need to continually up your game when it comes to finding talent, developing it faster, and extending the tenure of high performing employees. Are you constantly looking for more innovative solutions to try in this area? Subscribe to my Smart Workforce Strategies Blog to learn about the latest skills gap solutions I am uncovering in my research.

B. Upskilling/reskilling & more efficient knowledge transfer.

There is so much to learn in most jobs today! Learning overload is actually a new risk. And “upskilling” and “reskilling” have become popular business jargon for the next generation of knowledge transfer challenges facing businesses. Developing workforce skills has always been an issue. And even traditional problems of knowledge transfer demand more innovative solutions, particularly with Baby Boomers now in full on retirement mode. Transferring the valuable experiential knowledge of a veteran machine operator, sales exec, or nurse is essential in many cases.

But the need to radically transform the skills of current workers to leverage AI and automation technologies has raised the bar on knowledge transfer challenges. Learning faster to dramatically enhance the skills of current employees or totally retraining workers whose jobs have become obsolete will be a huge task in the next few years.

Some big firms, such as AT&T and Amazon, are investing billions of dollars in upskilling their workforce. But don’t kid yourself. Early returns suggest that upskilling or reskilling employees is bloody hard. This type of dramatic, accelerated learning is going to take time to figure out. But the stakes are too high to quit just because it’s hard. The best thing you can do is approach these challenges warily and to continuously learn what really works.

C. Build Strong Employer/Educator Partnerships

Most solutions to develop a stronger labor pool or to enhance employee skills require good relationships with schools – high schools, community colleges, or universities – to design curricula that prepare students with skills and credentials needed in the marketplace. There has been lots of progress in the last decade building stronger partnerships to make sure education programs are supporting employer needs. Today there are hundreds of alliances between companies and schools where education programs are customized to be as relevant as possible. But we have a long way to go.

There are built-in obstacles to creating effective employer/educator partnerships in a fast-changing world of workforce development. Lots of schools don’t see their mission as training students to be productive employees. And plenty of employers still can’t articulate their needs to schools in ways that can be translated into practical educational programs.

You will be much more effective if you understand the barriers you’re facing and strategies you can use to break through these obstacles. I’m currently writing six case studies for the U.S. Chamber Foundation on lessons learned and the challenges of these partnerships. To learn what we discover in this research subscribe to my Smart Workforce Strategies Blog.

D. Developing Productive Multi-Employer Collaboratives

Experience is proving that a lot of skill development problems can’t be solved by individual employers. Companies can be much more effective negotiating with talent suppliers if they combine forces and identify mutual talent needs.

There are many different types of workforce collaboratives, but most are regional and sector or industry focused. For example, Kentucky has more than a dozen collaboratives in various stages of development in healthcare, manufacturing, construction and logistics.

Collaboratives are difficult to create and sustain, but they may be the only answer for some workforce needs where collective planning can give schools a clear understanding of the specific types of courses and programs employers need. Check in your region for relevant collaboratives, or learn more from national organizations like the US Chamber Foundation or National Fund for Workforce Solutions, who are heavily invested in developing workforce collaboratives.

Your Action Steps

The first steps are to prioritize your workforce needs – today and tomorrow – and take inventory of your existing talent management and skill development initiatives. Are these programs really worth it? Or should you be exploring new types of solutions to meet your longer term skill needs? There’s no silver bullet here. But prioritizing and integrating your initiatives is an essential first step.

In my next post, I’ll complete this strategic workforce model by detailing issues essential for implementing long term, sustainable solutions for your future skill needs. This will give you the “Big Picture” for tackling skill shortages to drive business growth.  Let me know if you’d like to have a conversation about how I could bring solutions and inspiration to help your audience or team tackle their most pressing workforce challenges.