An expeditious world that has experienced new global trends is gradually expanding towards faster adaption. A similar shift is co-occurring in the industrial world, and employees and organizations must adapt as quickly as possible. For the very same reason, there is a surge in demand for improved skills. All of these scenarios have encouraged companies to focus on upskilling their staff.
The global talent shortage is soaring in the US market, and 75% of employers need help finding candidates with the right blend of soft and technical skills. For this reason, employers have started focusing on the upskilling workforce. The most in-demand skills that need upskilling these days are analytical skills, marketing, teamwork, research, sales, and leadership. Let’s deep-dive into the blog further to understand how to approach upskilling the workforce.
Table of Contents
What is Upskilling?
It is a process of acquiring relevant competencies required to work in the present day corporate environment. Upskilling comprises of continuous employee training programs for moving forward in the existing job and guiding to find more opportunities in future within the organization.
Benefits of Upskilling Workforce:
The advantages of using upskilling are numerous; here, we have mentioned some of the most vital benefits. It highlights why employees should develop in-demand skills and how it helps them succeed throughout their careers.
- The first and foremost benefit of putting money into employee development, growth, and learning is that it makes the workforce feel valued. Chances of employees leaving the company are significantly less. It is vital to make your staff feel valued. According to McKinsey’s research, the primary motive behind quitting employment is not feeling valued by managers or organizations. They do not get to learn new things or find their job enjoyable.
- Another research powered by Gallup-Amazon disclosed that 48% of the employees in the United States would happily move on to new jobs if training for new skill sets is provided during the switch. Additionally, around 65% of the members of the workforce take into consideration that employer-provided upskilling is vital while looking to switch to promising new jobs.
- Upskilling can also boost the morale of the workforce and sustain recruitment costs. As one study by Gallup reported, the cost of replacing an employee could rise to twice that of the existing employee’s annual salary. Upskilling builds an agile workforce and ensures employee growth, personal and professional development, adaptability, and flexibility.
- Upskilling facilities increase the organization’s reputation through word of mouth of the staff. It happens due to job satisfaction because of upskilling. The heightened organizational culture amplifies the brand image, making retaining and attracting excellent employees easier.
Result Bearing Tips for Encouraging Upskilling:
Holding top-ranking positions or top managerial positions comes with huge responsibilities. Such people are responsible for articulating the teams’ goals, visions, expectations, creating understanding, and helping everyone work towards the same purpose. They have a plan of action to monitor the organization’s growth regularly. Upskilling is the best way to bring in regular development, and here are a few ways an organization can encourage upskilling.
- When you are part of the workforce, you are responsible for your career development as much as your organization is responsible for you. First it is essential to investigate what options are available. If you are a part of a proactive organization, there will be apparent programs running all the time promoting offerings to its employees. But, if you are not part of such an organization, you can go out of your way to attend webinars and take classes to upskill yourself, which will help you switch to a job that provides upskilling opportunities.
- Leaders within the organization should organize their own kind of upskilling. This means conversing about your subordinate’s career aspirations and assistance needed in development areas. There needs to be more than just having a discussion annually. Enabling flexible learning and supporting staff development is a must these days, and it can be productively achieved through flexible time off and microlearning.
- Leaders should be closely associated with the learning and development departments, as it has vast learning resources, valuable workforce data on skills, and learning requirement for teams. The learning and development team can craft courses according to the organization’s requirements (based on trends, skill requirements, or business needs), which leaders can encourage their teams to undertake.
- Creating a talent-seeking resource within the organization can help meet the business needs quicker by advertising new roles, projects, or stretch assignments and developing individuals by informing, engaging, and encouraging staff to participate.
Here are a few eye-opening statistics about the ROI of Upskilling:
Statistics that B2B ventures should never miss out on are as follows:
- 60% of all the CEOs consider that the upskilling initiative positively changes the company’s culture.
- When workforces were trained on soft skills, it brought about a 250% return on investment.
- Most of the workforce is filled with millennial and Gen-Z workers, and 50% expect their employers to provide learning opportunities
Techniques for Upskilling Your Workforce:
- Cross-Training: Learning more than one specific job to become more professionally well rounded.
- Job rotation: Moving the employees between jobs with an agenda to transferring knowledge, competencies and skills.
- Peer coaching: When more than two colleagues work together to share their expertise, expand, refine and build new skill sets.
- Self-Training: Managers can encourage their employees to forge their own learning path by removing barriers and building incentives.
Conclusion
There is never enough explanation that can be provided about the importance of upskilling. If you want to ensure success for your business, upskilling is the way to go. To make your employees stay, gaining trust is a mandate. Upskilling workforce can help you provide your staff with a belief of reliance.
Presently, upskilling employees about top technology trends, best lead generation tools, data analytical skills, and leadership are some of the areas organizations can focus on. When you teach these relevant skills that are at par with the market demands, employees are willing to put forward their valuable time and energy for the organization’s growth. Keeping a check on all of these will increase your business revenue, employee retention, and profitability.
