Providers must develop a talent transformation strategy to survive in the current labor market—Accenture pushes forward

The idea of reskilling has been bandied around endlessly over the past few years. At first, the emphasis was on individuals to reskill themselves or face inevitable obsolescence at the soulless onslaught of automation. Increasingly, though, we hear about the real driving force—there isn’t enough skilled technical talent in the labor pool. At a recent analyst event, Accenture discussed how they’re reskilling their teams to grow capability rather than safeguard against automation. As an executive at Accenture highlighted, “we’re only just starting to see businesses recognize that sitting around waiting for an employee with the perfect profile to knock on their door is beyond unrealistic.” 

Investment in reskilling isn’t to safeguard employees from obsolescence; it’s to ensure providers have the talent they need to deliver 

The labor market in most geographies is proving beyond–challenging for providers and enterprises alike. Exhausted labor markets and key talent pools saturated by unprecedented demand are forcing executives to rethink hiring, training, and retaining. In Europe, for example, an Accenture executive pointed out that some talent pools are completely exhausted as companies looking for particular skills all chase the same people. For Accenture, this meant one simple thing—it needed to increase the already considerable investment in reskilling staff rather than battle competitors and partners for the same resources. 

This process of “newskilling” today’s workforce in anticipation of a growing demand for a raft of change agents is already yielding fruit. Accenture Technology has retrained over 50,000 of its existing employees in new technologies; similar figures more broadly across Accenture represent a significant percentage of the total employees working for the firm. 

Accenture’s investment in training is part of a sweeping transformation initiative. Tens of thousands of employees have needed to pivot away from SAP to S/4 Hana coupled with a broader understanding of cloud capabilities, for example, proving that despite the name, newskilling is less about turning COBOL developers into blockchain consultants and more about understanding where fresh customer demand necessitates the retraining of internal staff. Across the board, Accenture is driving a talent transformation strategy based on a few simple truths. The labor market can’t provide it with the talent it needs, and there are enough talented and passionate individuals internally that, with a little training, can eagerly meet the fresh demands of new technologies. It’s this perspective that’s driving major investment and sweeping internal change. 

Paying for training is easy; building a culture of continual learning is much harder 

A big part of Accenture’s strategy is to invest the time and resources necessary to reskill its team. Building huge training programs, while expensive, is relatively easy. And they’re not the first provider to throw money at the problem. Other major IT firms have pumped resources into retraining, in some cases putting hundreds of thousands of employees through broad training activities. The hard part, however, is keeping that ball rolling. 

A core tenet of Accenture’s ongoing newskilling project is based on fostering an environment where all employees want to continually learn—a crucial and often understated pillar of keeping pace with the environment of perpetual change that technologists, among others, often find themselves in. It’s building this environment that is undoubtedly the most challenging. While Accenture seems optimistic about the journey it’s on, there’s a more fundamental issue at stake: the age-old battle of who’s responsible for retraining. Historically, the bulk of the training burden sat with the individual on the journey from school through university and onward to professional qualifications.  

This model, by and large, worked for the modern enterprise. Employees were incentivized to secure better qualifications with the lure of greater remuneration and benefits, and enterprises would get qualified employees. However, the dynamic has changed significantly. Plopping a poorly designed self-learning platform on the HR portal no longer cuts it. To survive, providers must develop a clear talent transformation strategy and ensure that the training resources are available alongside a structured program to make sure employees are ushered toward skillsets that are the most likely to be valuable in the future. The reality is that technological change is moving too quickly for professionals to make the rational economic decisions they would have in the past. Combined with challenges employers are facing in with the labor market, it’s clear that providers must come armed with a plan rather than let the market solve the talent crisis alone. 

The Bottom Line: Accenture’s sweeping talent transformation program is well underway; other providers would be wise to make the most of the talent they have, rather than fight pyrrhic battles for a shrinking talent pool. 

It’s simply unrealistic for providers to expect a constant stream of highly qualified professionals with an array of relevant skill sets to keep trotting up to their recruitment fares. The talent market is continually evolving and the new economic reality for service providers is that they must invest significantly in the retraining and transformation of their existing talent if they are to survive. Fighting for the same resources while droves of passionate professionals face obsolescence due to poor planning and a reluctance to loosen the purse strings is a strategy that will lead providers to one rather poetic destination: their own obsolescence.