Skilling Them Softly - Bridging Skill Gaps For The Future Industrial Workforce

Doctoral thesis, 2026

Industries are facing rapidly evolving skill needs, driven by technological transformations, the climate crisis, and geopolitical threats. This leads to widening skill gaps, which are complex to understand and involve multiple stakeholders, including employees, employers, education providers, and policymakers. Bridging these skill gaps requires not only technical solutions but also strategic organisational practices and motivation.
This research aimed to propose ways to bridge these skill gaps by incorporating stakeholders' diverse perspectives. To pursue this mission, Design Research Methodology was applied in four steps: understanding the problem and formulating the research goal, exploring stakeholders’ needs, proposing a solution to the problem, and evaluating this solution.
The findings of the studies in this research are presented in seven appended papers. The results include a definition of skill gaps, a description of the main stakeholders involved, and a deeper understanding of learners' motivational needs. Moreover, this thesis provides insights into managerial practices and challenges in bridging skill gaps within organisations. Additionally, the results highlight companies' workforce readiness towards Industry 5.0, regarding skills, upskilling initiatives, and workforce resilience. Lastly, the thesis proposes and evaluates a solution for personalised skill matching that recommends learning opportunities to employees based on their skill gaps.
The contribution of this thesis extends over three main dimensions: theoretical, practical, and societal. Theoretically, it improves understanding of skill gaps and identifies both individual needs and organisational practices. In practice, it provides guidelines for designing motivational learning, a framework for developing organisational practices to address skill gaps, and policy recommendations for targeted skill development aligned with Industry 5.0. The research also offers practical insights into platforms for managing skill gaps and highlights challenges and practices encountered during implementation. Societally, it underscores essential ways to prevent unemployment and enhance people’s well-being.