Recently we found a current employee skills gap survey conducted be LMA Consulting Group and the Inland Empire Chapter of APICS. The published Skills Gap Survey is both insightful and enlightening. It validates what most owners and managers know to be true about the skill gaps of employees when hired, and the absence of qualified skilled employees to fill open positions.
You will notice the second and third highest rated skill gap needs are communication and presentation and management and leadership in that order.
The report also states: Although traditionally, manufacturers and distributors have been focused on professional and technical skills, soft skills have gained in criticality. Having employees with the technical skills is no longer enough; to compete in today’s new normal business environment, collaboration is a must. An emerging trend towards professional training and development programs (typically including certification) occurs as executives are faced with bridging skills gap with limited time and internal resources.
Read more of the skills gap study by clicking here.
Our intRAtrainTM Blended Learning Solutions is an highly effective and efficient approach to filling the skill gaps of new and existing employees. In a recent interview with Gary Gardner, former Vice-President of Human Resources at a global coating company, intRAtrain™ learned how leaders impact business performance. Gardner commented that when leaders are properly trained you see an improvement in team performance, greater productivity, good communication, and all employees being treated with dignity and respect. When supervisors are not trained properly as leaders there is often team conflict, poor results, and differing treatment of team members by the supervisor. As a result key performance metrics such as safety, productivity, quality, and turnover are impacted.
So when asked what this all means Gardner stated, “One of the things I see with good supervisors is that they understand the basic concept is ‘You get what you measure’ and if you are measuring productivity, safety, quality, turnover or issues like employee satisfaction you are going to see improvement in those numbers. A good supervisor who is working hard on those areas and tracking those results will see a dramatic improvement in those areas which is overall best for the company.”
The good news is that leadership is a skill that can be learned with time and effort. intRAtrain™ has developed intRAtrain™ Blended Learning Solutions which incorporates a 6 step process of: 1) pre- assessment to establish the current level of knowledge and understanding; 2) performance contracting that sets desired behavior change; 3) eLearning that maximizes knowledge transfer; 4) live learning that optimizes skill development; 5) post-knowledge assessment to ensure participants learned the critical and need-to-know information; and 6) reinforcement/virtual coaching that ensures ongoing focus and extends the behavior and performance change process.
“Leaders are the backbone of organizations. intRAtrain™ BLS offers companies a unique approach to help them develop leaders and employees. It allows employees to achieve more and faster while focusing on key business principles that make companies stronger and improve the key performance metrics of the organization. Our ability to take the learner from start to finish with our unique performance breakthrough model is exciting. Not all systems ensure that the skills learned are reinforced with coaching. The system is truly a complete package,” states Jerry Van Oort, CEO of Russell Associates.
