Wasted Workforce Investments: Why bad training and hiring cripple competitiveness

Key Takeaways:

1. Misaligned training and unnecessary hiring waste critical resources and hamper workforce competitiveness.

2. Over a third of corporate training spend is misaligned with addressing real skills gaps.

3. Nearly half of open roles could potentially be filled by upskilling existing employees.

4. AI-powered skills intelligence tools enable precision training aligned to highest-impact needs.

5. Skills analytics optimize talent investments, boosting training ROI and reducing hiring costs.

Did you know that the average cost of a bad hire can be between 15%-21% of that employee’s salary, depending on seniority? Hiring and training are major expenditures for any company, but these investments often get wasted due to a lack of workforce skills intelligence and insights. Misaligned capability building and suboptimal hiring decisions hamper the returns organizations can realize from their human capital investments.

The Issues with the Existing Approach

Generic, one-size-fits-all training programs frequently miss critical upskilling needs for employees. With limited visibility into existing skills data, companies risk investing in training programs that develop capabilities non-essential to employees' roles or overarching business priorities. The result is wasted training spend and a stagnating level of workforce competitiveness.

When it comes to hiring, companies often lack full visibility into their existing internal skills supply. As a result, they hire for roles when adjacent skills are already present in-house and go untapped. Organizations are frequently unable to identify opportunities for internal redeployment or upskilling of current employees into new roles. External hiring becomes the knee-jerk default solution, even when it may be unnecessary.

The Solution: AI-Powered Skills Intelligence

To optimize their human capital investments and maintain a competitive edge, organizations need an integrated skills intelligence solution. With capabilities like skills mapping, gap analysis, and career pathing, these platforms provide insights that enable precision training aligned to the highest-impact skills needs. Skills intelligence tools facilitate targeted internal mobility before unnecessarily hiring externally.

Leveraging AI-powered skills analytics, companies can analyze their workforce data to pinpoint where to focus capability building and hiring investments for maximum impact. Skills intelligence illuminates the paths for deploying existing talent into new roles through upskilling, cross-training, or reskilling. Before hiring expensive external candidates, the tools identify current employees who could transition into open roles with targeted training.

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Optimizing Workforce ROI

Misaligned training and unnecessary hiring drain critical resources and constrain an organization's human capital from reaching its full potential. However, these are preventable workforce capability issues. AI-powered Skills Intelligence provides visibility into workforce data that has traditionally been opaque, highlighting where investments will have maximum capability impact.

By optimizing how you invest in building and deploying skills across your workforce, you can boost the training ROI, minimize excessive hiring costs, and maintain a competitive edge. With skills intelligence, organizations can rest assured they are developing the right skills, allocating talent optimally, and positioning their workforce for long-term success.