As we approach a new year and a new decade, smart employers are already looking to the future. They’re considering what skills employees will need to meet changing industry demands. Healthcare, skilled trades, and many other industries are in a state of change and growth. Your employees should be too. 

The hospitality industry is growing. It’s also feeling the pinch of the record-low unemployment rate and high workforce non-participation rates. To find and keep qualified workers, hospitality industry leaders must embrace training as a solution.

Dara Warn, Chief Operating Officer at Penn Foster, shares some advice for what to look for in a training partner and how to help hospitality employees meet training goals.

Is the skills gap real? Whether you believe it’s a business boogeyman that lurks in the dark imaginations of overworked hiring managers, or you see it as a problem for your LinkedIn connections, you might agree on this one thing: it won’t affect your industry. After all, roles at your company are in demand and you have more applicants than positions to fill. For now.

Spotify’s Wrapped has been shared across Instagram and social platforms like wildfire, sending premium users into a music-fueled trip down memory lane, reliving their band obsessions over the last year--and decade. This sent us down our own rabbit hole, slightly less musical but equally as capable of inspiring an emotional response to our learner’s ability to prepare for their next best career. Here’s a few of our favorite moments of 2019!

The demand for healthcare employees has been growing for years with no signs of slowing down. To fill open positions and plan for the future, smart healthcare providers are building talent pipelines that will help them meet their staffing needs, which will be critical as the organization grows or as specialized services need to be offered.

What do talent pipelines for healthcare look like? Traditionally, healthcare providers would post a job, interview, and hire new employees, which may take time and may not attract the right candidates. To better address this, many providers are beginning to train and hire within their organization. This might include training non-clinical employees for clinical roles or attracting and recruiting entry level staff with the promise of training benefits and promotion. The goal is to build a talent pool that the clinic or hospital can quickly draw from when new positions open up. At the same time, these well-trained employees become more engaged, providing better patient care. They are also more likely to stay in their position or with the organization, meaning that there are fewer open positions that need to be filled and less time and energy spent on hiring. 

Training employees takes time and resources, two things that are in short supply in the fast-growing world of healthcare. That’s why the smartest healthcare providers are partnering with training providers to create sustainable talent pipelines.

As a business leader, you expect your employees to have certain foundational skills. Some of these competencies vary by industry. For example, if you're running a contracting company you might expect all employees to have the math skills to be able to accurately calculate space and distance. If you're the HR manager at a hospital, you might expect that all employees know how to use your medical records management system. Other skills, like communication, ethics, and problem solving, are so universal that they go without saying. Or do they?

Make no mistake, healthcare is a service industry. In most cases, patients and their families are facing difficult and emotional challenges. They’re away from home, ill, and feeling vulnerable. What might seem like a small irritation under normal circumstances can escalate to a catastrophic event under these conditions. Which is why training employees to interact with patients, families, and visitors is critically important.