A global approach to redefine talent strategy

A pandemic has plunged the entire planet into the new world order, with deep carves of digital transformation edged into an enterprise’s core to handle new tectonic shifts in the market, the industry, consumer behaviour and the nation’s economy as a whole. Growing capabilities in technology need a diverse and growing skilled ecosystem to bridge the great digital divide we find ourselves in now.

Sweden’s escalating digital skill gap in fact, has been the prime focus of discussion among businesses and education leaders in the recent ‘Future of Work’ conference in Stockholm’s World Trade Centre. Swedish IT & Telecom Industries’ Council’s ‘The Almega Report’ forecasted ~70,000 unfilled digital roles by 2022 – accounting for nearly 4% of the European digital skill gap[1]. The figures from the report illustrate the top unfilled Swedish roles in 2020:

Fortunately, we have the technology. What we need is accelerated reskilling and the matching of the right talent for the right job. This blog is the beginning of a series diving into the various challenges in meeting such talent shortage, how this impacts efficiency, productivity and competitiveness of a business, and the ways to address them innovatively with collective strength.

Quest for new talent
In 2017, a new word ‘Kompetensutvisning’ was officially added to the Swedish lexicon – which refers to erroneous deportation of a person with skills or competency needed in the labour market[2]. Given that the workforce shortage in Sweden has reached record levels (particularly in Stockholm, Sweden’s tech-hub), trivial mistakes directly, negatively affect both businesses and the economy.

We therefore stand before a seismic shift of needed skills – versus an equally large skilled workforce, waiting to be untapped. This search for the brightest stars in the industry cannot be accomplished in isolation, or without a collective effort. Just to exemplify outside the tech-industry, when Sweden faced an alarming fall in airline travel after COVID-19, the healthcare sector did the unthinkable, and reskilled the laid-off airlines’ staff to ease the growing strain in hospitals due to the pandemic[3]. This is only one of many ways to demonstrate where efficiently matching the need for capability with the right leadership skills and execution – at the exact right time – will have tangible economic benefits.

At a time when employers are desperately looking beyond borders for a skilled workforce, all symptoms point to a ‘talent drought’, not a ‘talent war’. Fortunately, these are also new approaches where technology and digital talent consultancies can collectively solve the issues, without red tapes.

A new global approach to employment

The answer has been staring right at us in the face. Hiring remote talent has suddenly emerged as a realistic option, where even local employees have learnt to work over video conferencing calls. Going beyond the typical 100-mile radius lies the collective strength of Sweden’s biggest talent hunters and consultancies.

In fact, we can meet this industry gap by going beyond traditional competitive models of doing business. Moreover, due to a collective centuries-worth of experience in combination with the latest human capital technologies, thorough vetting methods and conformity across ‘glocal’ regulations, most of us can agree that, there is no way any project remains behind its deadlines.

We at YASH , through our work on latest open-shared services philosophy believe in finding businesses and projects with the right talent at the right time – regardless of who can find the talent.

In the following blogs in this series, I will dive deeper into the specific out-of-syllabus Kompetensutvisning challenges in hiring for digital roles, the state of the consulting industry after the pandemic, and the niche competencies needed within companies to nurture and grow the new-generation talent capital. Stay tuned!..

• Codeinstitute.net
• Diversifyfoundation.org
• HBR.org

• Future of Work
• HCM
• Kompetensutvisning
• talent strategy