Evolving Your Talent Strategy

The Urgent Need for

Workplace Learning—
and How to Execute on It
 P.3 P.5 P.10

Introduction Addressing the current Creating competitive

Trends and challenges skills gap capabilities from within
shaping today’s global
workforce
Table of Contents

P.15 P.19 P.29

Using talent matching to The end-to-end approach to Conclusion

“build” your talent skills development Securing the skills your
business needs

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 2

Introduction

3
Trends and challenges shaping
today’s global workforce
In the US alone, the skills gap will cost the economy $1.2 trillion in the next decade,1
while in the UK, businesses are already spending £6.6bn each year2 on short-term
fixes, underpinned by inflated salaries and temporary staff.
Compounding this challenge is the ongoing ‘Great Resignation’. Despite the current
economic climate,3 one in five workers plans to quit their job in 2022,4 following
a string of record-breaking resignation levels around the world. In this context,
organizations must invest in employees and demonstrate the value their business
places on development, boosting retention and engagement.
What’s more, with the World Bank5 warning of global stagflation and a recession,
reskilling offers a way to retain talent that could otherwise be threatened with
redundancies by moving them to more urgent business roles. And for organizations
that have announced hiring freezes, reskilling also offers a cost-efficient route to
continue closing skill gaps.
The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It
Companies must urgently rethink their approach to securing the
skill sets necessary for digital transformation. Failure to do so will
collectively cost those organizations trillions.
The combined effects of the acute skills shortage, ‘Great Resignation’ and a
potential recession ahead, underscore the case for reskilling from within as the
single-most sustainable talent strategy.
Through the lenses of five in-demand skill sets—web development, machine
learning, database software, cloud computing, and mobile development—we
explore why shaping more innovative, competitive businesses from within is more
important than ever.
And given that only 3% of today’s organizations6 at present always achieve their
desired objectives and business impact with their learning programs, we also
provide a guide for how learning and technology leaders can succeed in their
mission to transform their business through bespoke skills transformation tactics.
4
Addressing the current
skills gap

5
Looking beyond
traditional talent pools
Roles that command in-demand skills

Learning and technology leaders must take rapid action to tackle the skills Web development Cloud Computing
shortage facing their organizations at present, and subsequently unlock the • Back-End Web Developer • Cloud Security Architect
innovation those skills enable. • Full Stack Developer • Cloud Security Engineer
• Object-Oriented Programmer
In Coursera’s Global Skills Report,7 leaders can discover potential skills shortages
• Front-End Web Developer
locally and globally, from Coursera data covering over 100 million learners. They
can use this with an eye to tapping into global talent pools, and to forecast gaps
before they impact their business. Machine learning Mobile Development
• Machine Learning Engineer • Mobile Software Engineer
While no two business have identical needs, a survey of over 18,000 developers8 • Computer Vision Engineer • iOS Developer
and 4,000 recruiters from 131 countries reveals that five of the most in-demand • TensorFlow Developer • Android Developer
tech skill sets today are:
1. Web development Databases
4. Cloud computing
• Data Analyst
2. Machine learning
5. Mobile development • Data Scientist
3. Database software • Data Engineer

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 6

Who’s got the skills?
Proficiency levels indicator

Using Coursera’s Global Skills Report, below we explore the skills proficiency Cutting-edge
75-100%
levels recorded for the five skill sets identified: web development, cloud
computing, machine learning, mobile development, and databases, to gain a Competitive
clearer picture of the state of skills around the world. 50-75%

We do so in 8 markets: Australia, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Emerging

25-50%
the UK, and the US.
Lagging
0-25%

Machine Learning

France Germany United Kingdom United States Australia India Mexico Saudi Arabia

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 7

Databases

Australia United States United Kingdom Germany Saudi Arabia India Mexico France

Cloud Computing

France Mexico Australia Germany India United Kingdom United States Saudi Arabia

Mobile Development

Germany United States Mexico France United Kingdom India Saudi Arabia Australia

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 8

Web Development

France Australia Mexico United Kingdom Germany India United States Saudi Arabia

The proficiency levels for these skill sets vary significantly in every market.

The increase in remote work in the wake of the pandemic spurred optimism that the skills shortage could be offset by
access to a wider talent pool.9 Yet for many in-demand skills, the talent pool, even at a global scale, is not sufficient to meet
business demands.

This missing talent poses the bigger question of whether, at a time of unprecedented uncertainty like today’s, taking a traditional
response to closing the talent gap—external hiring—is still the most feasible business strategy.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 9

Creating competitive
capabilities from within

10
The skills shortage is a
global challenge
As demonstrated in the previous section, the current skills shortage is felt
globally, and the opportunity created by remote global hires is offset by a parallel
rise in competition for those people. In other words, if talent can work from
anywhere, they can be hired by anyone, too.
Digging deeper into budgets and aggressively pursuing hires may only address
the problem in the short-term, and be too resource-intensive, given today’s state
of skills. It doesn’t solve the underlying lack of skills.
The global challenge of skills shortages requires a more strategic approach.
The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It
What’s making it difficult to recruit workers?
According to research from Mercer,10 as the “Great Resignation” continues, remote work hasn’t
actually made hiring any easier. When employer’s were asked, “What’s making it difficult to
recruit workers?” here’s what they had to say:
57%
Inability to find the right skills at the right price in the market
50%
New competitors for talent, given flexible working practices of companies
outside of normal geographic scope
48%
Fewer qualified employees available to hire
11
External hiring won’t solve today’s
challenges On top of this, people are in the workplace longer than ever, but the skills that underpin those
careers are evolving faster. Organizations should support learners to develop expertise not just
in one area, but in two or three areas, whether to develop their existing careers or to support
employees in career-switching.
To put it in perspective, external hiring today is:
This can be thought of as evolving expertise from the traditional T-shaped profile, to the
• Expensive—using a recruitment agency can cost 20-30% of the M-shaped profile.15
final salary11
Workers have traditionally accumulated Today’s workers need M-profile knowledge
• Time-intensive—engineers, for example, take an average of 49 days knowledge in a T-shaped profile
to hire12
• Hard to retain—20% of new hires leave within 45 days13 Broad competencies Broad competencies

Explained through the lenses of the five skill sets selected, among the most
expensive roles to hire in tech today are:14 enterprise cloud architects, security
Deep Deep Deep Deep
architects and data scientists; all of which require at least one of the five in- expertise expertise expertise expertise
demand skill sets earlier identified—database, cloud computing and more.
Age Age
25 75 25 75

Source: Nick van Dam, Learn or Lose, Breukelen, Netherlands: Nyenrode Publishing, November 2016

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 12

McKinsey16 survey respondents note that: With this in mind, learning and development programs need to be an ongoing
element of every worker’s career, with their journeys tailored to the specific
skill sets they need, when they need them. Learning and technology leaders,
meanwhile, must measure current skill levels and respond to them.

They also have to find a balance between two competing priorities:

Changes to their companies’ people delivering impactful training, and doing so within employees’ time frames

and talent strategies are among the for learning.

highest value moves to make. To tackle this, learning programs should offer a mix of learning formats, suited to
different skill requirements, learning abilities, and time constraints. For example,
programs might include shorter-form content, hands-on learning, and specialist
courses. This enables learning and technology leaders to flex around employees’
busy schedules while also maximizing engagement in learning.
McKinsey & Company,
Managing Tech Transformation, May 2022

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 13

Every learner can
discover the right
Content types on Coursera
content on coursera
Clips
Clips drive engaged and continuous learning through 5-10 minute videos and short lessons—with over 200,000 available on
Coursera. Additional videos and lessons are surfaced within the context of longer courses.

The overall stackability element of the content Guided Projects

on Coursera shown on the right, allows leaders to
build bespoke learning programs from different
content blocks, suited to different needs and role
requirements. The Skills Dashboard from Coursera
also helps leaders track skills development by role,
skills domain, and mastery level.
Guided Projects provide learners with step-by-step hands-on learning, featuring with instruction from industry experts to help
them develop skills mastery.
Courses
Courses on Coursera teach essential and cutting-edge skills through 4,000 different pathways available across business,
leadership, technology, data science, and human skills.
Professional Certificates
Professional Certificates prepare learners for in-demand careers with key industry qualifications in less than a year.

Degrees
Your employees have the ability to choose from a wide variety of online Master’s and Bachelor’s programs to elevate their
careers to the next level.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 14

Using talent matching to
“build” your talent

15
Matching existing talent to internal
skill gaps
Building an internal strategy for reskilling requires aligning existing talent with
the skill gaps that need to be plugged in order to create the most value. This
process of ‘talent-matching’ helps organize a business’s learning program, fast-
track results, and ensures existing skills are maximized.
The process of “talent matching”—particularly at scale—can be challenging.
Coursera helps organizations in their talent matching process in several ways.
The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It
How Coursera fast-tracks talent-matching
LevelSets evaluate skills proficiency, with bite-size assessments quickly revealing an individual’s
proficiency in specific tech skills and providing content recommendations to maximize learning.
In doing so, businesses can target upskilling and employees can focus on leveling up their
existing skills.
SkillSets offer job-based learning programs that target skill proficiencies like databases, machine
learning, web development and many more. These help learning leaders to rapidly reskill or
upskill employees for in-demand roles.
Academies feature the most relevant SkillSets to make deploying a job-based learning program
even simpler. The Tech Academy, for example, provides a complete skill development solution
for technology teams, with beginner, intermediate, and advanced learning options across over 80
different SkillSets.
Skills Dashboards provide insights into how a learning program is performing, by tracking both
technical and human skills—including business, data, and technology—across four proficiency
levels. Learning leaders can easily identify where individuals are excelling or struggling, and
match them with additional relevant learning.
16
Prosus is doing things right. As one of the largest technology investors in the
world, Prosus recognized artificial intelligence (AI) as a core competency they
needed to build. Their L&D team decided to launch three Coursera Academies
to develop data and analytics, cloud and IT, and software engineering skills.
Employees responded enthusiastically to this initiative, completing over 1,600
assessments, and giving courses a 4.79 out of 5 satisfaction rating.
Building a great L&D program starts with asking the
right questions:
• What is the current role of L&D at your organization in driving digital transformation? How
should it change?
• How competitive are your business, technology, and talent development and retention
capabilities? What do you wish you could do differently today? What’s stopping you?
• How do you plan to get the capabilities you need?

Deploying the right content to the right learners

is a massive challenge. We wanted to give our
employees the exact skills they need. We also
wanted a technology that would help us break
barriers and better understand how people learn.

Bartosz Zieleznik,
Head of Online Learning at Prosus

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 17

Learning on the frontlines

Talent matching also enables organizations to tap into existing talent pools Career academy from Coursera: become a career
in new ways. Workers of frontline-heavy organizations account for 80% of the
global workforce, or 2 billion people.17 Traditionally, workers in these jobs face
destination for frontline workers
low wages and poor benefits, meaning insecure employment and high turnover.
Yet over 60% of frontline workers18 in the US alone say the prospect of upward • Enable incoming frontline talent to build in-demand skills associated with higher mobility—
from web development to data analysis—with flexible, compact and job-relevant professional
mobility would be the chief reason to join an organization and stay there. By
certification
matching this vast pool of talent to relevant learning, organizations can plug skill
gaps, provide a pathway to economic mobility for employees, and show that • Leverage the power of leading industry brands—including Google, Salesforce, and IBM——to
engage employees with career development
costly churn is not inevitable in frontline-heavy industries.
• Train your team on the latest technologies with Guided Projects
The bottom line: long-term upskilling and reskilling strategies are the best
solution to overcome the talent shortages. Macroeconomic disruption and • Track, measure and benchmark your team’s skill development with the Skills Dashboard to
technological acceleration will only exacerbate the urgency. make reporting on the ROI of learning easier

By unleashing the potential of existing talent and building a highly-skilled and • Accelerate internal mobility with features for employees to easily showcase their skills,
credentials, and project portfolios
highly-engaged workforce, businesses can deliver on digital transformation
goals and achieve ambitious business objectives, even in turbulent times.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 18

The end-to-end approach
to skills development

19
Designing a learning program for a To demonstrate the ROI of learning, leaders must build programs that set the
business up for success from start to finish, addressing any lingering reservations

successful talent strategy on behalf of employees or senior stakeholders. The best way to do this is to make
sure there is a clear, end-to-end approach to skills development.

The end-to-end approach to skills development

Identify Assess Deploy Benchmark Match

How are you identifying the skills
you need and how to get them?
Whether it’s through informative
reports like Coursera’s Global Skills
Report or technologies like SkillSets
which provide job-based learning
programs, the first step to building
a successful L&D program should
be identifying what skills you need
in your organization and how you
want to secure them.
How are you assessing what
skills you have to inform your
upskilling investment approach?
Once you know what skills you want
to target, finding ways to calibrate
content recommendations to your
employees’ skills levels enables you
to reach your learning goals faster.
Coursera does this through
LevelSets, which assess an
individual’s proficiency level for
specific skills.
How are you ensuring that the
content deployed is job-relevant,
engaging, and measurable?
Every employee has different
learning needs. It’s possible to
address them by mixing different
content types such as short-form
Clips and Hands-On Projects as well
as deeper learning like Professional
Certificates, into your L&D program.
Technologies like Coursera SkillSets
and Academies help fast-track
content curation by providing clear
recommendations for you.
How are you measuring and
benchmarking upskilling
outcomes?
Tracking the ROI of learning by
measuring actual skills developed
and informing spend for future
upskilling is a must-have in order
to evaluate the success of your
program. Skills Dashboards by
Coursera help you measure, track,
and benchmark your employees’
skills performance against peers in
the industry.
How are you matching
individuals with the right
skills to opportunities in your
organization?
Upskilling is an ongoing process.
By continuing to match the right
individuals with the needs of your
organization through a methodical,
visual and data-supported
approach, a higher performing
business and workforce is in reach.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 20

Business leaders are often under considerable pressure to deliver results. They need to move quickly to upskill The following pages offer skills maps outlining some
employees for in-demand roles. Coursera Academies offer ready-made SkillSets tailored to specific roles in data of the building blocks an organization might want
to choose from when customizing SkillSets for high
and analytics, leadership, tech, marketing, and finance. They’re built around real-world job requirements with
in-demand skills:
courses from leading industry experts and provide leaders the assurance that their learning program is ready to
deliver. For example, for skill sets like web development, Coursera offers SkillSets curated for job roles like back- • Web development
end web developers, full-stack developers and object-oriented programmers. • Machine learning
Leaders can also customize Custom SkillSets for those times when a hyper-tailored approach is needed to • Databases
upskill or reskill an employee. Custom SkillSets enable organizations to develop their own unique programs from
• Cloud computing
scratch, using Coursera’s thousands of courses as the building blocks. Looking to upskill an AI engineer with new
machine learning skills? Coursera allows you to select from over 110 scorable skills like applied machine learning, • Mobile development
artificial neural networks, and computer vision, to curate a Custom Skillset.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 21

Skill maps for five
in-demand skills

22
Essential skills map for machine learning

The skills map below shows the different building blocks that can make up an employee’s learning journey to machine learning
expertise, from bite-size Clips to certifications.
Examples:

Teach a lesson • Applications of Machine Learning (Beginner)

Clips
5-10 minutes • An Example Machine Learning Problem (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a tool • Unsupervised Machine Learning for Customer Market Segmentation (Beginner)
Guided Projects
< 2 hours • Tweet Emotion Recognition with TensorFlow (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a topic • Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Beginner)

Courses
4-6 weeks • Introduction to Applied Machine Learning (Intermediate & Advanced)

Advance a skill • IBM AI Foundations for Business Specialization (Beginner)

Specializations
3-6 months • Machine Learning: Algorithms in the Real World Specialization (Intermediate & Advanced)

Get them job ready • IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate (Beginner)

Certificates
3-12 months • IBM AI Engineering Professional Certificate (Intermediate & Advanced)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 23

Essential skills map for web development

The skills map below shows the different building blocks that can make up an employee’s learning journey to web development
expertise, from bite-size Clips to certifications.
Examples:

Teach a lesson • Web Development Tools (Beginner)

Clips
5-10 minutes • Code Walkthrough - PHP, MySQL, and PDO (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a tool • Introduction to HTML (Beginner)

Guided Projects
< 2 hours • Build Your First React Website (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a topic • Introduction to Web Development (Beginner)

Courses
4-6 weeks • Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4 (Intermediate & Advanced)

Advance a skill • Responsive Website Development and Design Specialization (Beginner)

Specializations
3-6 months • Web Applications for Everybody Specialization (Intermediate & Advanced)

Get them job ready

Certificates
3-12 months
• IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate (Beginner)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 24

Essential skills map for databases

The skills map below shows the different building blocks that can make up an employee’s learning journey to database expertise,
from bite-size Clips to certifications.
Examples:

Teach a lesson • Relational Databases and SQL (Beginner)

Clips
5-10 minutes • Database Keys and Indexes (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a tool • MySQL with Information Technology (Beginner)

Guided Projects
< 2 hours • Learn PHP Database Connectivity (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a topic • Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere (Beginner)

Courses
4-6 weeks • Database Management Essentials (Intermediate & Advanced)

Advance a skill • Databases for Data Scientists Specialization (Beginner)

Specializations
3-6 months • PostgreSQL for Everybody Specialization (Intermediate & Advanced)

Get them job ready

Certificates
3-12 months
• Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate (Beginner)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 25

Essential skills map for cloud computing

The skills map below shows the different building blocks that can make up an employee’s learning journey to cloud computing
expertise, from bite-size Clips to certifications.
Examples:

Teach a lesson • History and Evolution of Cloud Computing (Beginner)

Clips
5-10 minutes • Deployment Strategies (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a tool • Machine Learning Pipelines with Azure ML Studio (Beginner)

Guided Projects
< 2 hours • Custom Prediction Routine on Google AI Platform (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a topic • Introduction to Cloud Computing (Beginner)

Courses
4-6 weeks • Microsoft Azure for Data Engineering (Intermediate & Advanced)

Advance a skill • Cloud Application Development Foundations Specialization (Beginner)

Specializations
3-6 months • Cloud Computing (Intermediate & Advanced)

Get them job ready • IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate (Beginner)
Certificates
3-12 months • Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Cloud Architect (Intermediate & Advanced)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 26

Essential skills map for mobile development

The skills map below shows the different building blocks that can make up an employee’s learning journey to mobile
development expertise, from bite-size Clips to certifications.
Examples:

Teach a lesson
Clips
5-10 minutes
• Java: Classes and Objects, an overview (Beginner)

Teach a tool • Android Programming for Beginners - A simple BMI calculator (Beginner)
Guided Projects
< 2 hours • Intermediate Object-Oriented Programming with Java (Intermediate & Advanced)

Teach a topic • Introduction to Android Mobile Application Development (Beginner)

Courses
4-6 weeks • Introduction to iOS App Development with Swift 5 (Intermediate & Advanced)

Advance a skill • Android App Development (Beginner)

Specializations
3-6 months • Advanced App Development in Android (Intermediate & Advanced)

Get them job ready

Certificates
3-12 months
• Meta Android Developer (Beginner)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 27

Once programs are underway, using a tool like the Skills Dashboards from Coursera enables leaders to track the
ROI of learning in real-time, quantify employee progress in critical skill sets, and report on the impact of programs
to other stakeholders with concrete data. This empowers them to bolster the case for further investment.

The Skills Dashboard for machine learning mastery below showcases how learners at one company are
progressing skill development within the machine learning competency over time. Leaders can see how many Why is tracking the ROI
employees have reached the intermediate and advanced levels of mastery over time in skills such as applied
of learning in real-time
machine learning, deep learning, and machine learning algorithms.
important?
• See if your learners are mastering the skills
they need

• Identify lagging skill areas that may need

additional growth and investment

• Understand if your learning engagement strategy

is effective

• Focus on opportunities to introduce new content

to acquire the skills your business needs

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 28

Conclusion

29
Securing the skills your
business needs

Macroeconomic risks are looming, and the current skills gap is felt globally— While in this paper, some of the guidance is framed around five specific in-
acute shortages can be identified across different markets. Specific sectors, demand skill sets, the processes outlined are universal and can be used by
regions and businesses face unique challenges. These should be addressed learning leaders to build any range of programs.
through targeted development programs. What is ubiquitous is the pressure
Ultimately, by investing in learning holistically, businesses will gain the skills
caused by skills shortages and the urgency to relieve it.
to power the innovation necessary to drive competitive advantage in an era of
Approaching this problem by outsourcing skills, or chasing talent on the open macroeconomic uncertainty.
market, are resource-intensive paths with unreliable results. Learning and
technology leaders must instead commit to internal reskilling and upskilling
through a clear end-to-end approach and long-term strategy.

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 30

Endnotes

Trends and challenges shaping today’s global workforce Creating competitive capabilities from within
1. American Action Forum, ‘Projecting Future Skill Shortages Through 2029’, (2019) 10. Mercer, ‘The truth about what employees want’, (2021)

2. Open University, ‘Employer webinar: Embracing a changing skills landscape’, (N/A) 11. The Undercover Recruiter, ‘The True Costs of a New Hire in the UK’ (N/A)

3. BBC, ‘World Bank warns of recession risk due to Ukraine war’, (2022) 12. LinkedIn, ‘Can you wait 49 days? Why getting hired takes so long in engineering’, (2021)

4. World Economic Forum, ‘The Great Resignation is Not Over’, (2022) 13. Workable, ‘How to calculate and reduce new hire turnover rate’ (N/A)

5. World Bank, ‘Slowing Growth and the Risk of Stagflation’, (2022) 14. Stack Overflow, ‘The three top-paying tech roles in 2022 and the skills you need to land them’ (2022)

6. McKinsey, ‘How companies can close the capability gap’, (N/A) 15. McKinsey, ‘Managing tech transformations’, (2021)

16. McKinsey, ‘Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mind-set’, (2019)

Addressing the current skills gap

7. Coursera, ‘Global Skills Report 2022’, (2022) Using talent matching to “build” your talent
8. Statista, ‘Most Demanded Tech Skills Worldwide’, (2022) 17. ComputerWorld, ‘Microsoft turns its focus toward frontline workers with Teams tweaks’, (2022)

9. Deloitte, ‘Where will your employees work in the “next normal”?’, (2020) 18. Harvard Business School, Building From the Bottom Up, (2020)

The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It 31