Upskilling Initiatives are a Waste of Time

Upskilling initiatives don’t work.

It’s not in the idea of upskilling where the problem exists. It’s hard to argue with any endeavor that aims to prepare people for a changing future.

The World Economic Forum has research that says the skills gaps are growing around the world and is supporting organizations in their pursuit to fill these gaps.

But the discussion about skills gaps isn’t new, and our obsession with closing it is causing more harm than good.

In 2014, the Obama Adminstration was concerned about a growing skills gap in America. In the same year, 35% of employers surveyed said they were having trouble finding the talent they needed, citing a lack of available skills to meet job demands. Chief Executives, including Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase, were worried about “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

What was driving the concern besides a mismatch of open roles and unemployment?

Technological advancement.

Big data. Machine Learning.

Fast forward to over a decade later and the conversation about “upskilling”, “reskilling, and “skills gaps” are a still a massive focus for organizations and Chief People Officers.

Our intentions are good, but misplaced. The idea of skills gaps, whether real or fictional, is not a harmful pursuit in and of itself.

It’s our approach to filling skills gaps - upskilling or reskilling - that we’ve got all wrong. 

Finding the Right Skills to Fill the Gap

During last skill gaps crisis, I worked in an organization passionate about addressing it. 

Leaders were looking at technological advancement and job requirements of the time - specifically how big data, Python, ML, and advanced automation were going to disrupt the workforce. They decided…

These tools are going to make more manual jobs irrelevant.

When looking at the skills gap, they determined that manual trades were going to disappear, leaving an even larger gap. They forecasted that field workers with specialized equipment training and hard labor jobs were going to be replaced, and that those jobs needed to be upskilled to more technical roles that were in high-demand like…

Coding.

Data analytics.

Finance.

So they spent millions pushing field and knowledge workers through remedial html and finance training to prepare them.

Today those trade jobs they thought would be replaced are more relevant. And there’s not enough skilled people to do them. 

The knowledge worker and technical skills they predicted would replace them? Being vaporized at the hands of AI.

Upskilling isn’t our issue.

Predicting the future is. 

No one had any idea that this version of AI would be the one that surfaced. We had a flashlight in the dark, getting glimpses of the shape of it, only to have OpenAI turn on the lights and go “holy s#!t that’s what it looks like!?”

Any reskilling initiative from 2014 didn’t stand a chance at placing the right bets about the skills needed to thrive in the future.

I’d argue that the skills we need are neither technical nor industrial, but cognitive, and they have long stood the test of disruption.

Curiosity, creativity, learning agility, growth mindset, a sense of persistence and agency…

These are the skills that have been and continue to be durable. They’ve been the difference for thousands of years.

These are the skills that allow a human to look at the list of open roles and go “the skills I have don’t seem to be as valuable as they were. I better find a new path.”

That’s where we should invest our time. 

-

By Adam Allred

Designer, consultant, and co-founder of Bourbon Fat