Skills shortage with bosses too

Skills shortage with bosses too.

While technical areas and trade skills are widely acknowledged as critical areas of skills shortage in Australia and New Zealand, new data from the Leadership, Employment and Direction (L.E.A.D.) Survey surprisingly reveals that there is also a significant skills shortage in leadership and management.

From a list of 16 potential areas of skills shortage, the L.E.A.D. Survey places leadership as second and management as sixth.

The rankings were gleaned from 2,600 respondents (leaders, managers and employees categories) and published in the just-released L.E.A.D. Survey quarterly results. Download complete report here.

The top 16 skills shortage list, in order, is:

1. Technical areas
2. Leadership
3. Sales and Marketing
4. Operations
5. Trade skills
6. Management
7. Customer service
8. Information technology
9. Planning
10. Administration
11. Quality
12. Strategy
13. Unskilled labour
14. Communications
15. Logistics
16. Process workers

The research also revealed that 57% of Leaders, 70% of Managers and 66% of Employees say their organisations are currently experiencing a skills shortage.

The 11-year-old ongoing L.E.A.D. Survey is conducted by Chase Research on the commission of Leadership Management Australasia (LMA). It is the first time L.E.A.D. Survey has included skills shortage in its online workplace research. Sixteen potential areas of skills shortage were nominated to identify the extent and nature of this critical issue in Australasian workplaces.

Commenting on the data, LMA’s Chief Executive, Andrew Henderson said: “We were surprised to see leadership and management skills so high on the list of shortages. It is of a great concern because their skills are essential for the management of an organisation’s broad skills set. Leaders and manages clearly need to look in their own backyard too when it comes to skill development.”

“Leaders and managers need to take concrete action to improve their own skills through formal training and mentoring, and be willing to take on new ideas and new thinking as it relates to their leadership and management approaches,” he said.

“But equally important is the identification of and investment in leaders and managers of the future within their organisations. If today’s leaders and managers aren’t spotting and developing tomorrow’s leaders and managers, organisations will suffer a double impact from the apparent skills shortage through their lack of strategic thinking,” said Mr Henderson.

ENDS

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