SMEs are a job creation powerhouse for the UK. Our entrepreneurs are working at full tilt, with a 14% increase in the number of new businesses being created in the last year despite the pandemic. As these businesses scale, how can they ensure that their teams grow with them? Given that half of all employees around the world will require upskilling by 2025, this is an area that must be a priority for all businesses.

While the upskilling challenge is something that all businesses must tackle, it's arguably more challenging for small businesses and startups. Each new employee must be able to juggle multiple roles and move at the rapid pace required to grow. Amazingly, it is estimated that 29% of the skill requirements from an average job posting in 2018 may no longer be needed in 2022.

This is where lifelong learning comes into play as an ace card, allowing existing employees to upskill in line with the business’s needs. Giving employees routes to grow their role is both a powerful retention and attraction tool when it comes to the war for talent. According to LinkedIn’s 2021 Workplace Learning report, employees at companies with internal mobility stay almost two times longer.

For employees to power the businesses of the future, they must be able to access flexible, agile skills training. However, the UK workforce overall has some catching up to do in regard to its approach to professional education. Research has shown that the UK has particularly low levels of qualification to higher technical skills according to government research, with only 10% of adults in the UK having one of these as their highest level of qualification, compared to 20% in Germany and 34% in Canada.

There are also tens of thousands of vacancies caused by skills shortages across the country, and employers have said that the biggest barrier to meeting their skills needs through adult education and training is that funding is not available or that such training is prohibitively expensive. With 1.5 million jobs at high risk of automation, these challenges will only increase in the years ahead. 

It is true that the training has historically been ineffective, inaccessible and expensive, with challenges including passive learning, low course completion and high prices that reserved learning for the few. Essentially, either enrol in an in-person course that’s expensive and exclusive, or sign up for an online course and sit through endless videos. It’s no surprise that the skills gap isn’t getting any narrower.

Online learning provides a solution. Adult learners, wherever they are in the country, can now access world-class learning as the online learning experience means that physical distance is no longer a barrier for education. The flexible nature of tech-driven learning makes it easier for working people, wherever they are based, to get the higher-level skills they need and can be deployed by businesses of all sizes to empower and upskill their employees. Fundamentally, online learning can also deliver the skills training at the huge scale required, combining the access and affordability of the internet with the structure and support of a classroom. 

While businesses can do their part in empowering their employees, the Government too must do more to make these courses accessible to those already in work. We need a regulatory environment that makes it easier for people to access the training needed to equip them for the jobs of tomorrow, even when they are already well qualified, and a more liberalised approach to skills funding that lets more people overcome the cost hurdle to lifelong education.

Where elite business education was once reserved for the Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 executives of this world, online learning makes world-class adult education accessible and affordable for all. After all, lifelong employee learning is a vital part of any growing business, not just a nice-to-have.