Skills are a valuable commodity for any organization and upskilling is just the key to keeping people’s skills in sync with the changing world of work. With an upskilling initiative in place, you’ll be able to reap these four key benefits:
Helps employees remain employable
56% HR professionals say their organization’s skills gap is moderate to severe
In 3-5 years, today’s skills are predicted to become obsolete
By investing in employees’ skills training, employers not only increase their professional value but also send them the message that they have a place in the company’s future. Moreover, it boosts morale, productivity, and employee retention.
Sustains a culture of learning in the workplace
As an L&D professional, one of your main goals is to support every employees’ career growth through lifelong learning. To do this, you can:
Create awareness for training resources
Regularly inform employees what training offerings they can participate in
Make training a necessity
Together with managers, advocate for learning by helping them make time for it
Provide them with a learning library
Ensure your learning resources are organized, accessible and easily searchable
Connect personal goals to business objectives
When employees can connect their training to current and future benefits, this transparency will motivate them to take training seriously
Makes workplace changes easier to handle
While you can’t always predict changes, you can prepare for them and adjust as they come. That’s why it’s up to L&D to ease the impact of all these changes in the workplace by implementing an upskilling initiative.
68% invest in upskilling to handle changes within the organization
65% invest in upskilling to train employees on new technologies
By upskilling, you’re working on employees’ specific skill sets and encouraging the ability to accommodate and tune to change. With that, it’s not that hard to introduce new digital technologies and changes.
Saves time, money, and energy
Much of the top talent you’re looking for might already be in your company. So consider internal mobility first by upskilling your current employees!
“Don’t think about hiring as the only way to grow. Yes, it’s still vitally important, but growth will come from upskilling and redeploying people.” – Josh Bersin, world-renowned HCM analyst
Why is upskilling a smart move? It costs more to hire someone new every time a job role opens up than to retrain an existing employee. Not to mention, it takes longer.
It costs around $4,000 and takes around 42 days to find and fill a position.
What are you waiting for? Upskill now!
If there’s anything the new world of work has taught us, it’s that talent needs to evolve alongside technology. To be fully prepared for what’s next, every business should operate with a future-proof plan — a plan that has upskilling and reskilling at the forefront.
Sources: WestMonroe, Degreed
