How to Upskill and Reskill Your Employees

 

In a previous blog post, we have seen the meaning and importance of upskilling and reskilling. In today’s post let see how an organization can upskill and reskill their employees.

Before creating an upskilling strategy, conduct a discovery phase to see what skills you will need from your employee base down the road. The goal must be to stay ahead of your industry’s future demands to get an edge on your competitors.

Identify Gaps in Skills

Look at current and future business requirements and determine what a future workforce may need for your particular industry. Assess the capabilities of your current workforce and identify gaps in skills or mismatched roles.

Build a plan to deal with the skills gaps by reviewing current upskilling strategies and improving the effectiveness of your learning systems.

Create a cultural shift around upskilling and reskilling that makes learning, career development, and hiring from within a priority.

Develop an Upskilling and Reskilling Plan

Create individualized learning plans and make sure your training is effective and engaging. Make training and development opportunities readily available and affordable for everyone. Accommodate different learning styles. Some employees might do best in a traditional classroom setting with a teacher. And a completely different segment might prefer walking through courses online. Others might prefer microlearning—watching 15-minute videos that cover topics in small increments. Providing something for all learning styles ensures the maximum amount of employees will want to participate.

Empower employees to choose their path. Put them in charge of their personal development plan, and help them make their own decisions around their career progression. When employees feel they have the freedom to choose what areas they develop, they take more ownership over their personal and professional development.

Ensure that employees have dedicated learning and training time and set up a reward and incentive program for completion. Ensure that employees have dedicated learning and training time and set up a reward and incentive program for completion.

Evaluate Your ROI

There’s no doubt about it—upskilling and reskilling are investments. But, tracking your employees’ engagement and measuring how improved skill sets have impacted your bottom line can make clear how worthwhile the investment is.

Building Skills for the Future

By investing in the upskilling and reskilling of your workforce, you’ll be reinforcing to your staff that even in these challenging times, their development is a priority to you. And once your company has figured out its new normal post-pandemic, you’ll be able to quickly scale up with a strong, resilient, adaptable team.

Final Thoughts

Each business must align their methods with their business objectives and requirements. Also, remember to consider different learning styles and balance these against individual employee needs.

Continued learning and development in the workplace have always been vital for businesses to grow and succeed. A stagnant workforce that does not move with the times will inevitably find itself lacking in the skills necessary to advance in the marketplace.