Soft skills are increasingly emphasized in job recruitment. Monster’s The Future of Work 2021: Global Hiring Outlook reported that when employers were asked to name the top skills they want in employees, they cited soft skills such as dependability, teamwork/collaboration, flexibility and problem-solving. These skills are desirable because they are regarded as harder to teach than hard skills. But as emphasis is placed on soft skills during job recruitment, conversations about the workforce’s hard “skills gap” grow louder.
Just how deep is the skills gap void? Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute issued a report showing that as many as 2.4 million jobs could go unfilled in the next decade. To put a dollar amount to it, that gap could jeopardize $454 billion of economic output in 2028 or more than $2.5 trillion over the next decade. Furthermore, almost 40 percent of American employers say they cannot find people with the skills they need, even for entry-level jobs, according to McKinsey & Company. Almost 60 percent complain of lack of preparation, even for entry-level jobs. This sounds like a lot of untapped talent that could be developed with effective training.
Employers are behind the eight ball when it comes to investing in training to address this workforce dilemma. Corporate investment in workforce training fell by 30 percent between 1999 and 2015. More generally, as a share of GDP, the U.S. federal government now invests less than half as much in workforce training as it did 30 years ago. However, a new hire for a skilled role can cost up to 20% more than workers that companies reskill to do the same tasks. So, why the hesitation? If organizations are aware of the continuously increasing skills gap and still aren’t investing in training, there must be something barring them from making the leap.
Investing in training is risky — what if your investment doesn’t produce real training outcomes, doesn’t increase productivity, or doesn’t improve the organization’s bottom line? There remains an ambiguous connection between training initiatives and business outcomes. If a training solution could prove learning occurred and training was successful, organizations could then measure the business impact of training following implementation. There are a number of training solutions — apprenticeships, programs, instructor-led training, eLearning platforms — that aim to provide organizations with an alternative that effectively closes skill gaps. Amplifire’s brain science-based learning platform stands apart because of its ability to demonstrate that learning has occurred, thus ensuring training has been effective.
Online learning offers a flexible solution for organizations who not only require training that fits within their structure, but also generates ROI and tangible outcomes. When it comes to upskilling, reskilling, and training employees, Amplifire’s adaptive platform creates a personalized learning experience for each learner. This, combined with proven-effective brain science principles incorporated throughout the platform’s design is what generates the positive outcomes that our customers experience — shown through our ability to provide evidence of learning.
Amplifire not only employs cutting-edge science to close the skills gap but has also benefited businesses by decreasing employee turnover and preemptively mitigating risks. Here’s how effective learning can translate into ROI.
How online learning improves business outcomes with effective training
Close the skills gap by closing knowledge gaps
From the Amplifire perspective, a skills gap is the result of a knowledge gap — one that can be filled by effective learning strategies. Our adaptive learning platform fixes knowledge gaps, uncertainty, and misinformation quickly by determining what learners already know, versus what they don’t. This way, the employees’ learning experience is tailored to their experience level. They spend less time training and more time on the job, cultivating their careers, equipped with more skills.
This type of personalized learning for skills training increases employees’ growth potential, expanding their career opportunities.
Decrease employee turnover
We touched on how personalized learning for skills training increases employees’ growth potential, expanding their career opportunities. Additionally, personalized learning keeps employees actively engaged — and employee engagement is critical these days. A Workday report revealed that growth-related comments represented 8% of all employee comments in 2021 — a 2% increase compared to 2020. This figure puts lack of professional growth as a top correlate to high turnover rates.
Amplifire also encourages the leadership side to engage with employees, as well. For example, when a learner demonstrates significant struggle on specific questions or topics, Amplifire’s reporting suite provides that information to instructors and/or managers as an opportunity for more personalized intervention. Ultimately, more one-on-one interactions emerge — perhaps an ironic result of a virtual solution.
Learning experience aside, Amplifire was first and foremost designed to make learning stick. Our platform is armed with numerous cognitive triggers that have been found to help people learn faster and retain more information. Faster, better training means increased productivity, and increased productivity is good for your bottom line.
Preemptively mitigate risks
A unique capability of Amplifire’s learning platform is that it detects commonly held misinformation (CHM). CHM describes the scenario when a person believes they are correct, but they are actually wrong. This confidence, although misplaced, is a precursor to action. When a person is confident, they act. When they act based on a misconception, mistakes are made that can be insignificant or substantial. CHM is detrimental to good business and can cost organizations revenue or worse — but you’d never know it’s there until after the mistake was made.
With the ability to detect and subsequently correct CHM before it results in costly mistakes is Amplifire’s superpower. As an online learning platform, we have the unique bandwidth to execute this feature.
Other benefits of online learning for skills training
Many of the business outcomes we discussed snowball into associated benefits. For example, offering skills training through Amplifire’s platform keeps employees engaged, thus promoting employee retention. But establishing a culture and infrastructure of training for hard skills not only helps to keep talent, it also allows companies to engage in more inclusive hiring practices. Say you find the perfect candidate, but they are lacking some hard skills as a result of circumstance. With an effective training program in place, companies can hire a wider range of talent.
The bottom line is: training is good for your business. Moreover, investing in the right training solution is even better for your business. Online learning is a scalable, flexible solution that can be tailored to fit your business needs. Amplifire’s platform takes online learning a step further, combining brain science with personalized learning to create a uniquely effective experience for learners. As the skills gap continues to grow, fill the hole instead of yelling into the void.
From the beginning, Amplifire has relied on innovative brain science to guide its product development to create the most effective learning and training solution, perfectly tailored to the way the human brain works. Learn more about how Amplifire helps people learn better and faster by checking out a demo.
