83% Employees Likely To Stay With Firms Prioritising A Skills-First Approach: EY & iMocha Report

EY, a professional services organisation and iMocha, a skills intelligence and skills assessment platform, today released their third report in their ‘Tech skills’ series titled, ‘Driving economic impact and realising value with skills intelligence’. The report highlights that 63 per cent of HR leaders observed a positive impact on talent retention, and 58 per cent saw improvements in employee performance due to Skills First Transformation (SFT) initiatives. A notable 83 per cent of employees believe they are more likely to stay with companies that adopt a skills-first approach.

It further notes that traditional methods often overlook the full spectrum of costs associated with workforce transformation. Skills intelligence provides a more accurate and holistic view, enabling better cost management and can yield up to 5x times the efficiency in transformation efforts, a crucial advantage as industries grapple with rapid technological changes.

The report reveals four pivotal insights:

Typical accuracy rates for current hiring, training, and attrition processes are at 70-80 per cent, which can be further improved by 10-20 per cent through skills intelligence.

The true costs of workforce transformation are often underestimated. When typical accuracy rates and hidden costs are factored in, they can drive up full unit costs by 3 to 10x of their typical values.

Regardless of the transformation type, an uplift in accuracy rates with skills intelligence can deliver 1.5 to 5 times higher transformation efficiency.

Realising the value from skills intelligence starts with a unified business case and requires collaboration across HR, business, and finance leaders.

Reflecting on the report findings, Priyanka Gupta, Partner, People Advisory Services, EY India said, "As skills intelligence gains traction, leaders need concrete data on its impact to move beyond initial trials. Companies should monitor their accuracy rates in hiring, training, and attrition to gauge their true costs and the improvements possible with skills-first transformation (SFT). As more organizations embrace SFT 2.0, we'll see industry benchmarks emerge, reflecting the real-world impact of skills intelligence."

Amit Mishra, CEO of iMocha, said, "As organizations face an accelerating pace of change, driven by AI and digital transformation, the ability to harness skills intelligence has become a decisive factor in achieving sustainable growth. Our latest report demonstrates that a skills-first approach not only addresses the pressing challenge of the skills gap but also unlocks significant economic value by improving the accuracy and efficiency of workforce transformations."

With increased accuracy from skill-intelligence in hiring, training and employee attrition across organisations, the economic loss due to friction in workforce transformations can potentially be reduced significantly, while improving employee engagement from its low global average of 23 per cent.

The report concludes that to address the global skills gap affecting 80 million job roles by 2030, companies worldwide must enhance their workforce transformation efficiency. With the integration of skills intelligence and SFT 2.0, there is a collective effort to significantly reduce the anticipated $8.5 trillion in lost annual revenues by 2030.