How to Upskill your Employees.
Upskilling is essentially the process of using education and training to develop skills. This in turn can improve work performance, and enable the individual to stay competitive in the job market or expand their role to incorporate other responsibilities.
Whilst upskilling is not a new initiative, the pandemic has highlighted the necessity for both employers and employees to remain vigilant in an increasingly competitive market.
Simple steps to upskill your workforce
Step One: Assess the skills you currently have access to
Map the core competencies and skills you currently have in your organisation. This data will form the baseline against which you can measure progress. Do your employees have additional skills that you are not aware of? Getting employees to complete a skills profile is an excellent first step to identifying gaps in your workforce’s skillset.Step Two: Future business planning
A clear business strategy plan can help identify the skills you will need in the future to meet your goals, and develop a skills plan. These should reflect predicted industry and technological advances. Some key skills in today’s market may be redundant in a few years, whilst there may be an increased demand for other expertise. Are you looking to expand to another market or develop a new product?Step Three: Employee involvement
Ensure your employees are on-board with upskilling by communicating the benefits and keeping your workforce fully supported and motivated. Identify employees who have the potential needed to fill gaps in your skill requirements. Allow those candidates to upskill so that they can fill those positions and roles as necessary.Step Four: Design a skills plan
Make a plan. Ensure your goals are SMART… Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound. When employees take ownership of their learning, they are more invested in it and more accountable.Step Five: The learning process
The learning format you choose depends on your specific requirements, learning objectives, and resources. Consider:- Are you looking at developing domain knowledge, or specific courses covering a spectrum of specialisms?
- Will training be tailored to a few individuals or open opportunities for all?
- Investment… how much time and money are you willing to spend to enable employees to gain these new skills?
- Do you have a training provider or teaching resource?
- How soon can the training commence?
- Remote learning, college study, workshops, bespoke training courses?
Step Six: Monitor progress
Track skills and monitor progress to ensure training mirrors your assessment of critical skills. If the organisation has the resources for it, the HR team can showcase any success stories internally to motivate other employees.
Step Seven: Match upskilled employees with new opportunities
Once the first phase of your upskilling programme is complete and employees have gained new skills or developed existing ones, ensure you provide the newly upskilled employees with the opportunity to apply for internal positions that require these skills.
