If you are attending conferences in 2025, you are probably hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and where pundits think technological development is heading for the real estate, mortgage and title insurance industries.
But you may not be hearing as much about what will be happening in the workforce in the coming decade, or more importantly, how you can position your company to ensure you have the workforce you need to compete in an entirely transformed environment.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has given plenty of thought to it, outlining a probable scenario in its 2025 Future of Jobs Report and warning of a more-than-likely skills gap arising if companies do not create a strategy today to anticipate where their industry is heading.
“Skill gaps are categorically considered the biggest barrier to business transformation by Future of Jobs Survey respondents, with 63% of employers identifying them as a major barrier over the 2025- 2030 period,” WEF reported in its key findings. “Accordingly, 85% of employers surveyed plan to prioritize upskilling their workforce, with 70% of employers expecting to hire staff with new skills, 40% planning to reduce staff as their skills become less relevant, and 50% planning to transition staff from declining to growing roles.”
One of the key challenges in the real estate industry will be finding the skilled labor needed to fulfill shifting job requirements. You may be thinking, “So, what’s new with that? The title insurance industry has always struggled to find a ready pool of experienced title professionals.”
The problem is likely to be exacerbated as all industries will be competing for an increasingly diminishing pool of professionals who have both the industry knowledge and technological acumen to fill a rising need.
WEF reports, “While hiring staff with new skills to meet emerging business needs features among the top three workforce strategies in 17 out of 22 sectors – possibly precipitating strong intra- and inter-industry competition over talent over the next five years – upskilling and transitioning existing staff from declining to growing job roles appears as an untapped opportunity: only the Automotive and Aerospace, Electronics, and Real Estate sectors currently aim to prioritize such job transitions as one of their top three workforce strategies by 2030.”
While you may be planning to hire the skills you need in the future, as the WEF points out, you don’t want to overlook the opportunity found in the professionals currently occupying the desks right in front of you.
If you don’t have a serious strategy for upskilling and reskilling your current employees, you may find yourself coming to the party late sooner than you think.
You already possess a goldmine of industry knowledge in the veterans working for you. Now, you need to get serious about bringing them into the future through a strong commitment to training programs that emphasize technical skills related to artificial intelligence, data management, technological literacy, analytical thinking and programming, as well as soft skills such as flexibility and agility; empathy and active listening, collaboration and teamwork; and leadership and resilience.
Closing Suite is here to help you prepare now for the transformation that is on the horizon. We provide full-service IT infrastructure, lead generation, transaction management solutions, money transfer solutions, back office support and agency optimization, assisting you in modernizing all of your processes as the delivery of title, escrow and closing services evolves into the future.