According to the Dublin Chamber’s latest quarterly business lollook survey, 40% of 300 companies believe their employees need improvement.

A lot has been revealed over the past year for business leaders, including the ability to change their teams and how much their employees can interact with online tools. But for some, a concern has been raised, in a new investigation by the Dublin Chamber, of a skills deficit.

The findings are part of the Dublin Chamber’s latest quarterly business lootlook survey of 300 companies in the first quarter of 2021. Of the 300, 52 percent said they had a skills gap, 40 percent said their employees needed upgrades, and 26 percent said pandemic brought these needs to light.

For example, in the last 12 months, one-third of participating companies said they have struggled to fill a particular skill gap. A small group (12%) said it was difficult to fill gaps with internal resources and 8% did not have the time or resources to fill them.

Ebrick McGibney, director of public and international affairs at the Dublin Chamber, said the results demonstrate the great impact of Pandemic on businesses and their operations.

“Kovid-19 has rapidly changed the way we work, and the logistics of remote work means new skills are needed in everything from HR to marketing,” Gibney said. Accelerating digitization of the economy changed employment processes, methods, and priorities, and changed the need for leading companies and staff to upgrade their skills to identify gaps in capabilities.

“The fact that most companies have identified a skills gap shows the pace of change. Mechanisms that reflect the pace of change in the digitizing economy need to be established to help companies find ways to properly upgrade and re-qualify their workers, especially in areas that have been severely affected by the current crisis.

The Dublin Chamber Survey also asked about companies’ sustainability plans. He revealed that 87 per cent of the companies that participated in the first quarter of 2021 made changes to be more sustainable compared to the same period last year. Of those, 47% made these changes last year.

While 28 per cent said their business profits would decline in the next three months – up from 5 per cent in 2020 – 30 per cent expect their workforce to increase, while 55 per cent believe their workforce will remain at a record low.