Building the Skills Your Business Needs by 2035
Most small businesses don’t think they have a “skills problem”.
What they actually have is a performance problem that keeps repeating.
People are capable, committed, and busy, but still:
decisions take longer than they should
problems bounce back instead of being solved
priorities blur under pressure
managers step in more than they want to
That’s not about effort.
It’s about the skills modern work now demands.
According to the CIPD’s latest lifelong learning report, the UK is heading for a 7.4% increase in jobs by 2035, mostly driven by growth in high-skill roles. Routine and administrative roles, on the other hand, are projected to continue their long decline.
And yet, as the report quietly points out, the skills that will matter most aren’t technical at all.
They’re human.
The top skills employers will need by 2035
The Skills Imperative 2035 programme looked across the UK nations and landed on six essential skills that will be in highest demand across almost every job:
1. Communication
2. Collaboration
3. Problem-solving
4. Organising, planning and prioritising work
5. Creative thinking
6. Information literacy (gathering, processing, applying information effectively)
These aren’t “nice to have” skills anymore. They’re becoming the bedrock of performance.
If you’ve ever said, “If only people could think things through…” or “I need my team to be more confident, not more compliant,” then you’re already seeing this shift.
If you’re reading this thinking, “Yes — but where do we actually start?”, that’s the question most SMEs get stuck on.
You don’t need a full capability framework or another long course.
You need a simple, structured way to build these skills into everyday work — without adding more pressure.
That’s exactly what 30 Days to a Stronger Team was designed for.
What this means for small businesses
For SMEs, these changes hit differently.
You don’t have layers of management. You don’t have a talent pipeline team quietly planning workforce skills for the next decade. You don’t have the luxury of slow transitions. When a skill gap shows up, it shows up loudly in performance, in customer experience, in rework, in time lost, in stress.
And because you rely so heavily on people wearing multiple hats, you feel the shift earlier than large organisations.
If your team can’t:
prioritise effectively,
solve problems independently,
adjust when things change,
or communicate clearly under pressure…
…it’s not just inefficient, it’s expensive.
Why we’re already behind
The report also highlights a tough truth: adult participation in training has been declining for over a decade. From 3.3 million adult learners in 2012/13 to just 1.6 million in 2020/21. Even with a slight recent uptick, we’re nowhere near historic levels.
Combine that with:
declining employer investment in training, down 27% per trainee since 2011, and
training participation drops sharply with age, with only 12% of 55–64-year-olds engaging in job-related training.
…and it’s clear why many SMEs find themselves with committed teams who simply haven’t had the chance to build the skills modern work now requires.
This isn’t a motivation issue. It’s a system issue.
This isn’t a failure of motivation.
It’s the predictable outcome of skills being left to chance for too long.
So how do SMEs realistically build these skills?
Let’s keep it practical.
1. Start with onboarding.
Most SMEs skip straight to job tasks, but this is the moment to build core skills early. Not with a lecture, but with small, scenario-based nudges:
“How would you prioritise these three tasks?”
“A client emails with this problem, what’s your first step?”
“Here’s incomplete information, what do you do next?”
This is skills-building disguised as induction.
2. Make micro-learning your friend.
The report makes it clear that time is one of the biggest barriers to adult learning. (If you’ve watched your team try to find 45 uninterrupted minutes, you’ll know.)
Keep it short. Relevant. Immediate. Useful.
3. Teach thinking, not tasks.
Tasks change. Thinking skills don’t.
Encourage teams to narrate their decisions, explain their reasoning, reflect on what worked and what didn’t.
It’s not fluffy, it’s capability.
4. Build skills into the work, not around it.
Most don’t need extra workshops. You need structured, guided on-the-job learning that happens inside the flow of the day.
Small shifts. Big impact.
Your 2035-ready business doesn’t need more content. It needs more capability.
You don’t have to overhaul everything or pause the business to get there.
30 Days to a Stronger Team gives managers a clear, practical pathway to:
understand where skills are really strong (and where they’re not)
spot small actions that boost capability quickly
strengthen performance without more meetings, documents or overwhelm
build confidence and clarity consistently, not occasionally
It’s hands-on, lightweight, and built for real SME life, the busy, multiple-hats version.