The Reskilling Imperative: A revolution in action
In the latest episode of the techUK podcast, we are delighted to bring you the final episode in our series The Reskilling Imperative, powered by Salesforce. Across this four episode series we’ve explored a range of issues relating to the digital skills gap - how do we ensure that the UK workforce has the necessary skills to thrive in the workplace of today and the future, how can tech companies ensure an inclusive workforce and support those from underrepresented and marginalised communities prosper, and how can business leaders support the upskilling of their current workforce to ensure they have the opportunity to continuously develop digital skills?
In this episode, Stuart Mills, VP of Trailhead and Ecosystems at Salesforce and Nabila Salem, President, Revolent Group and Board Member of the Tenth Revolution Group discuss the work Revolent Group is doing to plug the digital skills gap and bring in much needed talent to the Salesforce ecosystem.
The episode begins with Nabila outlining Revolent Group’s mission to tackle two key challenges facing the tech sector today – the growing skills gap and the need for more diversity in the industry. The tech sector needs far more talent than is available to fill the roles that are being created. This challenge is impacting all businesses, no matter their size. At the same time, jobseekers are hearing about the great opportunities available within tech, but they struggle to break into the sector without experience. Revolent works with Salesforce to tackle these challenges by cross training a diverse range of tech talent into Salesforce professionals, providing the ecosystem with much needed new talent.
Nabila and Stuart also speak about the societal imperative of ensuring that tech careers are accessible to all. Nabila highlights that diversity and inclusion is a challenge that most businesses face, particularly within the tech sector. Nabila flags the moral imperative to strive for more diversity and inclusion but if this is not enough to convince leaders, the business case is even stronger – more diverse working environments create better products, are better equipped to solve challenges and companies with diverse boards are outperforming their less diverse peers.
Revolent leads by example and are one of the most diverse workforce development partners in the industry with more than 50% women in the senior management team, 63% of employees identifying as Black Asian or Minority Ethnic and 37% of employees being the first in their family to attend university. And, as a member of the Salesforce Talent Alliance, they are also helping Salesforce customers create their own balanced teams.
Later in the conversation, Stuart and Nabila highlight the importance of continual learning and upskilling of the current and future workforce to address the digital skills gap. The businesses which embrace ongoing skilling are the most successful, with Stuart highlighting research which indicates that teams are 68% more effective where continuous learning is the norm. The podcast comes to a close with Nabila offering her three key takeaways for businesses trying to tackle the skills gap - encourage more young people to work in tech, look beyond traditional hiring options and finally cross-training people already in the sector.
Make sure to listen to the episode now to hear the full conversation.
If you’ve missed the previous episodes in this series, you can find them below:
- Episode one - How to thrive in the digital economy
- Episode two - Creating the workforce of the future
- Episode three - The role of business to help close the digital skills gap.