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The inability for people to retrain for new skills or switch industry is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost productivity, a study has suggested.
So-called ‘talent mismatch’ – not having the right people in the right jobs – is also resulting in businesses wasting money on recruitment, the PwC survey commissioned by LinkedIn has found.
Analysis of LinkedIn users and 2,600 employers from PwC’s Saratoga database involved examining five ‘talent behaviours’ in 11 countries and identified two significant ‘costs’ which are based on the UK being as good at matching talent with the right opportunities as the Netherlands, which was the most adaptable market in the study.
The research found a strong correlation between the adaptability of the talent in a particular country and the performance of its companies. If the UK was better at matching talent with the right opportunities, this could lead to £930 million worth of increased productivity.
However, the UK was named the second most adaptable country by its ‘talent adaptability score’, based on five averages: the number of times professionals in that market switch industries, the number of different positions held in a professional’s career, the number of internal promotions in that market, the number of employers a professional has had in each market and the number of open vacancies divided by the market’s population.
The UK ranked second due to the presence of a large number of global businesses combined with an above average movement of talent between positions.
Emerging markets India and China have lower scores due to the existence of fewer mature sectors and their geographic size, which limits talent mobility. Well-performing economies including Germany ranked lower than expected, in part because it is a specialised economy which works well while its sectors are buoyant and stable, as they are today. But it also makes the country less able to respond to structural changes.
“Businesses’ growth strategies are changing and many UK CEOs recognise that they don’t currently have the right people with the right skills in the right places to achieve their aspirations,” said Michael Rendell, partner, global head of HR services practice at PwC.
“Instead of a skills gap hampering growth plans, organisations need to be better at matching talent to opportunities. This includes using analytics to identify skills that are central to the business strategy now and in the future, improving internal mobility and rewarding people who display new and adaptable skills.”
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