The COVID-19 pandemic brought a new mindset to a lot of companies applying remote and hybrid opportunities to their employees. According to The Wall Street Journal, with this new era, 58% of the employees needs new skills sets to their jobs, 55% struggle to share and find organizational knowledge and 61% of the employees are unsatisfied with the technologies in their workplace.
Upskilling and Reskilling can be a solution to engage employees, develop their talents and keep businesses ruining in the best possible way.
What is Upskilling and Reskilling?
Upskilling is based on providing advanced skills to keep employees doing their daily based skills in an advance way, and that could be provided through training sessions and given courses. This way, the professional would enhance and improve their knowledge within their area of expertise.
Reskilling is the process of learning new skills, it’s when a professional is requalified in new subjects to be able to perform new functions in the company or train others.
Melissa Suzuno, HR and L&D Insights Writer, points out the two main differences between those tactics for businesses as “reskilling prepares employees for major change”, meaning that if there is some jobs becoming obsolete, the best solution is to reskill your team before looking for new people in the market. Prioratizin goals and set a timelines with the team, giving them access to a new platform and incentivizing employees to learn new techniques needed in the market to solve your internal lack. Now, if you want to expand and provide more knowledge and efficiency in your employee’s area and daily routine, improve and update their knowledge and performance, the “upskilling enhances existing skills”.
After understanding the main differences between those terms, you need to analyze the current moment at your company and how the employees are using their knowledge and skill set, but more important than that is how up-to-date they are with the newest techniques in the market.
Based on the Enterprise Center article, upskilling or reskilling is a long-term investment that can save time and money on the businesses. Besides being a proactive way to guarantee success and more efficiency on your team, updating their knowledge and best practices in the market.
What are the advantages of Upskilling and Reskilling?
Some advantages of applying those two concepts into your business, according to the Cross Knowleged, are based on reducing hiring costs, inspiring employees’ loyalty, resilience, and performance. The recruitment cost can be reduced because you’re allowing your employees to get the skill set needed for your business and with that, you can improve your onboarding process for new hires to be better prepared and make them feel more comfortable to ramp up quickly with your business needs. With this strategy, you will encourage your employees to contribute to the success of the business, gaining their value and respect, which will also stimulate their mentality and daily work. The agility and resilience will also be achieved upon their engagement to learn more and improve their skills, which can influence your company’s reputation and help keep your business strategies aligned with the best practices in the market.
How to apply Upskilling and Reskilling?
Some strategies, according to the Harvard Business Review, are based on:
- If you focus on skills of your employees and also on the ones that you want to develop, will demonstrate the commitment that your company has for the employees, enabling and recognizing them.
- You can encourage your employees to share their knowledge with others through learning sessions and acknowledging their initiative with some perks.
- Offering Apprenticeships will attract a more diverse workforce ready to learn and share new ideas for your business.
- Partner with schools and learning platforms to guarantee that your workforce will have a resource to utilize.
Choosing either way, upskilling or reskilling, your organization will be creating a culture of Continuous Learning extremely important nowadays for the business and employees’ engagement. Avenue Code. allows us, employers, to learn from other colleagues during the “Lunch and Learn” sessions, access to learning platforms to keep improving with the market best practices, and keep advancing and investing in the employers’ career, which leads the company to good employee retention, the attraction of new talents and overseeing the new strategies in the market ahead of time.
References:
- Suzuno, Melissa. April 2021. Udemy. Available on: https://blog.udemy.com/upskilling-and-reskilling/. Accessed on: April 17th, 2022.
- Enterprise Center. March 2022. Available on: https://enterprisectr.org/blog/benefits-of-upskilling-or-reskilling-your-business-team/#:~:text=What%20is%20Upskilling%20and%20Reskilling,to%20do%20a%20different%20job. Accessed on: May 3rd, 2022.
- Cross Knowledge. February 2022. Available on: https://blog.crossknowledge.com/why-employee-upskilling-and-reskilling-is-key-to-business-success/. Accessed on: Jun 3rd, 2022.
- Waddill, Deborah. December, 2021. Harvard Business Review. Available on: https://hbr.org/sponsored/2021/12/4-strategies-for-upskilling-and-reskilling-your-workforce. Accessed on: Jun 3rd, 2022.
