The global tech skills shortage is anticipated to affect more than 85 million people, representing an estimated $8.5 trillion in lost annual revenue by 2030, according to the International Monetary Fund.

While tech skills have been in demand for some time now, the demand for a digitally fluent workforce has spiked due to recent shifts in how we work and learn. Pluralsight’s 2021 State of Upskilling Report found that the COVID-19 pandemic, The Great Resignation and the rise of remote work have “exacerbated the global workforce challenge to adapt to a landscape that relies on digital-enabled solutions,” says Ken Leonard, senior vice president of global ecosystem solutions at Pluralsight. “While many organizations had to undergo tech transformations at great speeds to survive, individuals were impacted by the growing tech skills gap that continues today to affect their ability to do their jobs.”

The need for technical training and development is something that Go1, one of the largest eLearning libraries on the market, has seen firsthand. “We’ve repeatedly heard from our customers of the impact of the global tech skills shortage on their businesses,” says Basem Emera, vice president of partnerships and alliances at Go1.

It was clear that Go1 — which partners with top training providers to provide a curated suite of courses across topic areas — needed to partner with a technical training expert to tackle what has become a pressing, global business challenge.

Teaming Up

When looking for a technical training partner, Emera says that Pluralsight “stood out amongst the rest.” It’s easy to see why: Pluralsight has one of the best-perceived technical training catalogs on the market, with courses fit for learners across levels, on nearly all technical training topics, from data analytics and coding languages to machine learning (ML) and even specific courses on cloud concepts for cloud hosting platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure.

The partnership will play a key role in helping Pluralsight execute its strategy, which is “to be relevant to those who see solving [the technical skills shortage] as a priority directly aligned to their capacity to deliver on key business outcomes,” Leonard says. Partnering with Go1 aligns “with this strategic thinking.”

Democratizing Technical Training

With the partnership, which was announced in February of this year, all of Go1’s roughly 3.5 million corporate learners (including learners in non-technical roles) have access to quality video courses through Pluralsight’s technology skills platform, Pluralsight Skills. Historically, technical training has primarily been accessible only to learners in technology roles, Emera says. Therefore, the partnership is bringing technical training “to areas of the market that may not have seen this before.”

By democratizing technical training, more learners can access the courses they need to improve their ability to use innovative technologies and improve their performance in today’s digital business environment. And with a more technically adept workforce, businesses will be able to remain competitive in the age of digital transformation.

While making technical training accessible to all learners is a great first step in closing the growing tech skills gap, the training also needs to be personalized to be effective. Pluralsight’s curated learning journeys help “stagger” learning based on the learner’s existing knowledge and desired career path, Emera says. After all, the role of a software engineer is vastly different from that of a security professional and, therefore, targeted training is “of the utmost importance.”

Technical Training, Simplified

Tackling the global tech skills shortage is no easy task, and learning leaders are struggling to roll out timely, high-quality training that can help. By making personalized technical training available through the Go1 platform, learners can access all the technical courses they need on demand, all in one place. As a result, learning leaders will have more bandwidth to roll out other types of training and to continue acting as a strategic business partners.

The global tech skills shortage won’t solve itself, but strategic partnerships like this will help pave the way forward — no matter what digital disruptions lie ahead.