With so many jobs advertised every day and graduates being churned out of university by the millions, you'd think there's enough skill to go around for everyone. And you'd be wrong.

The skills gap is a crisis – and a deepening one. Technology is changing the way businesses run and there's an ageing workforce who are threatening to retire and take their skills and knowledge with them. 

So what is the skills gap and how can it be solved? Are skills disappearing or are they changing?

Well, it's a bit of both. But fundamentally, the business world has been slow to adapt to this crisis.

The good news is that it's not too late. In this article, we explore these questions and show how SimplyVideo can be used to solve the skills crisis.

What is the skills gap problem?

The skills gap is the difference between the experience and skills needed to perform a job and the experience and skills held by an applicant or worker. When the difference is large and widespread, it negatively affects businesses and the economy.

This problem can be characterised in several ways. On the one hand, the economy is experiencing a large turnover of experienced staff who are changing careers or retiring, leaving skilled positions open. 

Replacing those positions like-for-like is not always possible. Many businesses are reporting widening skill gaps in the labour market and are struggling to hire and train their new workforce. In its 2022 Future of Work survey, Monster found that 87% of UK companies were struggling to fill openings in their business. 

The "great reshuffle" has seen many quit their jobs and look for new careers. While workers have felt empowered to rethink their career choices, many are disavowing their qualifications and experience in one role to pursue another in which they are underqualified and inexperienced. 

On the other end, there are teething problems with new technology and older staff. If you're on the younger side, you've no doubt spent an evening with mum or dad trying to teach them how to operate their new smartphone or navigate social media. In a business scenario, these sorts of problems are more easily ironed out with effective onboarding and preparation. 

Why is there a skills gap problem?

What are the factors driving these changes? As we've mentioned, the problem can be defined in terms of skills gaps between generations.

But why, then, are the younger generations lagging behind? This is caused by many interconnected reasons rooted in education, training and technology. 

Education and training

There is a broadly held view among employers (and graduates) that qualifications in education factor very poorly in the recruitment process. This is based on the belief that the education system doesn't prepare students for the real world. To the extent that this is true, today's education is not keeping pace with the ever-changing world of work.

The obvious solution to this is training, but traditional training methods are becoming less effective and harder to scale, as well as being time- and resource-heavy. 

Technology

While automation and AI are helping streamline and increase production, they also change the jobs and skillsets needed for companies to adapt. Some traditional jobs simply don't exist anymore – creating skills gaps for older workers and challenges in education to make curriculums relevant to the shifting job market. 

How XR and SimplyVideo can help

Although technology has a history of causing problems, it never fails to find solutions as well. The skills gap problem is no different. Many businesses are turning to extended reality (XR) devices to shore up their skills crisis.

Using XR, companies can deliver expert training to workers while harnessing the technologies' power to transform and improve the quality of their training. 

SimplyVideo mitigates the skills gap

With SimplyVideo, training and onboarding can be expedited so that productivity doesn't have to suffer. Using videoconferencing, companies can onboard multiple trainees at once, helping them feel part of the team and introducing them to the culture of the company.

By equipping your staff with assisted reality (aR) devices, you can close the skills gap when and where you need to through SimplyVideo's "see-what-I-see" capabilities. It's cost-effective and allows remote training from anywhere to anyone. SimplyVideo gives trainees the reassurance and support they need and gives companies the confidence to hire and maximise potentially limited expertise within their workforce.

The platform also allows you to create video training programs for onboarding purposes, thus avoiding the hassle and time demands of in-person demonstrations. Furthermore, you can equip an expert with a single aR headset and stream live demonstrations to multiple hires through any device.

SimplyVideo and AR create new pathways to learning

With an augmented reality (AR) headset, SimplyVideo allows users to annotate live feeds and view 3D asset visualisations. These aren't just techy tricks – they're proven to increase performance and knowledge retention in trainees. According to Cem Dilmegani at AI Multiple, XR training boosts performance in 3 key areas:

• It improves knowledge retention by 15%
• It improves engagement in training by 80%
• It increases the efficiency of training by 75%

We know that employers are willing to hire people with less experience, but are cautious because of the associated costs. As Monster's 2022 survey highlighted, "63% of employers are willing to hire someone with transferable skills and train them".  With SimplyVideo, business leaders don't need to fret about onboarding costs and logistics – they can simply connect their workforces to expert guidance, anywhere and at any time. 

People learn in different ways and creating training options for a diverse workforce is essential to bringing your business into the 21st century. Not everyone can follow sheets and sheets of instruction manuals – and sometimes the best way to show someone something is through a hands-on approach or by letting them visualise the problem in front of their eyes. 

SimplyVideo puts these abilities in your hands so you can diversify your training and make sure no one is left wanting. 

Close the skills gap in your business today with SimplyVideo. Our collaborative video-call software works on all desktops and portables and with most XR wearables. Sign up today and get a 30-day free trial.