Upskilling and Reskilling: Why They’re Crucial for Business Survival
Highlights
Uncertain times have accelerated the need for upskilling and reskilling, ensuring employees remain agile and “in the know” to support evolving needs.
To uncover upskilling and reskilling needs, start by doing a current skills assessment to uncover any gaps and prevent future gaps from forming.
Developing strategies allows you to take an informed, methodical approach to upskilling and reskilling.
With a 21st-century global workforce, many organizations face challenges of integrating remote workers into effective teams — challenges that could be simplified with strategic investment in employee upskilling and reskilling.
New technologies and new ways of working disrupt jobs and the skills employees need to do them. Employers, leaders, and IT teams continually strive to adopt new technologies into their workflows, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), data analysis, automation, video conferencing, and other online collaboration tools.
Ideally, employees continue to learn these new technologies and be reskilled so that businesses continue to evolve and meet their goals.
To add an extra layer of complexity, enter the pandemic, and along with it, the immediate need to solve for an entirely remote workforce. In December of 2020, Forbes included Rapid Reskilling in its trends for 2021:
“The cataclysmic shift to remote work called for the immediate upskilling and reskilling of entire workforces, often disparately located and speaking multiple languages.
“That's a far cry from just 12 months ago when learning leaders were planning for skills gaps two years in advance. The pandemic has removed the luxury of time, and with new knowledge being created faster than ever, it's also deterred leaders from spending months creating learning experiences that have a short sell-by date. That's no bad thing given that far-in-advance L&D planning has always seemed nonsensical.”
The need for reskilling has only accelerated in the past year and isn’t going away anytime soon.
Upskilling and Reskilling Defined
Job skilling is needed when someone joins a company or starts a new role. They are typically taken through a New Employee Onboarding program to learn about the company, followed by more role-specific onboarding.
Reskilling is needed when there is a change in technologies, tools, processes, operations, or environment. An employee would need reskilling if the time management system they use has been replaced with newer technology. Employees might need to learn about logging into the system on a laptop, navigating the user interface, entering their time, digitally signing, submitting for approval, and logging out.
The Amazon Technical Academy is a large-scale reskilling example. This training initiative aims to reskill current Amazon operations associates to become software development engineers (SDE). For Amazon, this addresses the shortage of external applicants to satisfy growth and the evolution of roles needed to keep pace with new technologies.
Upskilling, on the other hand, refers to providing existing employees with more advanced skills through additional education and training. Employees have become anxious about not keeping up with technology and having gaps in their current skillset, and they want to learn new skills on the job
“Recent research shows that when workers are not confident in their skills, they feel more stressed, less productive, and their mental health suffers. Nearly half (46%) say they would leave their employer if they don’t see a commitment to upskilling. And to be clear, nearly half of your employees believe their core skills will be obsolete in the next five years.” (Fast Company, January 2021)
As businesses prepare for the future of work, both reskilling and upskilling will become more essential. The World Economic Forum estimates that about half of all employees worldwide will need to upskill or reskill by 2025 to support new initiatives created by tech and automation.
Upskilling is also an important component in meeting market demands and business goals. Currently, the National Skills Coalition shares that one in three U.S. workers have few or no digital skills, despite roughly half of those workers holding jobs that require some degree of computer usage. By providing employees with advanced new skills and learning opportunities companies are building the competencies needed to grow their business and stay competitive. It's an effective strategy for employee retention in a market where hiring has become increasingly challenged.
“The urgency for upskilling comes at a time when emerging skill sets are scarce and the talent market is tight — making it prudent to keep people even if they don’t have the right skills right now. Indeed, it’s often cheaper to retrain current employees than find and hire new ones, as the consequences of turnover can be felt at the bottom line.” – The Upskilling Crisis: Effectively Enabling and Retraining Employees for the Future, 2019
Steps for Evaluating Upskilling and Reskilling Needs
First, you’ll need to evaluate the current state of your employees’ skills and locate gaps and determine how to future-proof to avoid future gaps.
Determine current skill gaps of your employees by conducting half-yearly training needs analysis, skills mapping tools, or surveys to ask leaders, managers, and employees directly. Ensure that human resources are aligned with executive leadership on technology priorities and what new skills are needed to meet objectives. Most companies are still playing catchup to fill gaps caused by the shift to a highly digitized world, causing tangible assets such as machinery and real estate to be valued less than intangible assets such as intellectual property, patents, and brand reputation. This makes employees the most important asset for future growth.
Future-proof your workforce assets and training by determining what skill gaps employees may have in the coming years. Use forecasts from industry and technology studies to find out what other companies are doing, and talk to your own technology leaders to get their input and insights.
Sort and group the skills gaps into reskilling and upskilling needs. Reskilling is often needed for procedural changes, automation, and new technologies. Upskilling is more applicable to internal promotions and broadening skillsets within current roles. Determine how you’ll prioritize the needs: low-hanging fruit, biggest pain points, impact/effort ratio, most visible, customer satisfaction impact, or other valuation methods.
Once you’ve agreed on which gaps to address and prioritize first, you’re ready to develop strategies and solutions for reskilling and upskilling.
Develop a strategy and learning solutions for those skill gaps you identified as reskilling. Maybe you’ve prioritized a company-wide need for more effective virtual collaboration and communication.
Develop a strategy and learning solutions for those skill gaps you identified as upskilling. An example of a possible upskilling priority may be to retain the employees you have in the midst of the current worker shortage. You could do this by creating a faster track into management by offering leadership training to interested top performers.
As you plan and prepare for reskilling and upskilling, keep these key factors in mind:
It’s important to take motivation and inspiration into account. Employees are most motivated when they see the immediate relevance and usefulness to their current role or to the role they are working toward.
Allow employees to explore learning opportunities through an open ecosystem and learning community, rather than offering and requiring limited prescribed skills.
Award employees who complete trainings and share ideas and information with peers through positive manager feedback, gamification through online badges, and company-wide recognition for certifications.
Encourage a growth mindset in your organization by creating a culture of learning and allowing the time and space your employees need to explore, try, fail, innovate, and thrive.
You Don’t Have to Figure It All Out On Your Own
Prime 8 Consulting has been a partner to many clients on their journeys of upskilling and reskilling employees, as well as improving operations and processes. We have the experience to support and drive the effort to evaluate, plan, and deliver reskilling and upskilling programs for businesses of all sizes.
To see how we’ve helped other companies adapt, take a look at a few more of our customer stories or visit our Digital Learning Center to explore our modern solutions for upskilling and reskilling.
