In today’s economy, it is becoming increasingly harder for companies to attract and retain top talent. Amid the Great Resignation, top-performing employees have learned that they have more occupation options than ever. If your company isn’t giving them what they need, they will likely look elsewhere.

This is just one reason to invest time into understanding the importance of upskilling and reskilling your current team members. Upskilling and reskilling require a significantly smaller investment than hiring and training new workers. Additionally, as you reskill your employees, you will be creating a more well-rounded and cross-trained workforce. This implementation then increases your organization’s overall effectiveness over time.

Of course, you don’t have to figure this out all by yourself. Upskilling and reskilling software was designed to facilitate continuous learning by providing training programs and development opportunities that expand your team’s abilities and minimize skill gaps.

For example, upskilled employees may be promoted from within and need to prep for the new challenges they will face in their higher roles. These employees already possess the foundational talents necessary to fulfill the job requirements. However, you also want to ensure they are provided with further knowledge that can help set them up for success in their new position.

When you invest in upskilling and reskilling the workforce, your organization will emerge stronger and more resilient than ever. You will be better able to retain talent and find roles for employees where their natural talents shine through. This process can also help you find people who are a better fit for existing internal roles and make room for new roles in the future.

Upskilling companies are finding success in moving people up their internal ladders. For instance, a programmer could be upskilled to a systems analyst role. This process is linear and begins by identifying existing skills and working to make them even better. Reskilling, on the other hand, prepares team members for lateral moves or leverages their existing talents in ways that can fill newly created roles within your company.

Reskilling programs involve the training of team members on entirely new sets of skills so they are equipped to take on different roles within your organization. Companies will need to consider reskilling the workforce when people’s previous tasks or responsibilities become irrelevant, often as a result of technological advances.

As potential skills gaps loom, organizations are getting creative with the ways they utilize their existing workforces. Unfortunately, many companies don’t understand how to properly equip themselves with the skills they will end up needing the most. It is imperative to forecast potential skills gaps within your organization so you can determine what your workforce might look like in two, five, or even ten years. As you gather this information, you can begin reskilling employees to fill these skill gaps.

Although each business will have different needs, this outline should help you understand how reskilling develops within organizations:

• Prioritize the most essential skills
• Identify employees with the most transferrable skills
• Incentivize reskilling
• Put employees through formal courses and programs
• Provide cross-training opportunities and rotations
• Collect and analyze metrics of success

The standard upskilling definition is as follows: upskilling is the process of providing continuous education so your employees can learn new competencies. It is largely used to help employees improve in their current roles or progress into promoted titles.

An upskilling strategy involves a comprehensive initiative to convert applicable knowledge into productive results within your organization. You don’t want to just have people meeting classroom requirements; rather, you want to have them move into higher roles and excel at those positions.

Organizational upskilling programs are long-term investments that augment the skills, knowledge, and competencies existing employees have already so they can eventually advance their careers within your organization. If you’re interested in upskilling yourself, there are programs you can utilize to boost your own knowledge base outside of what your company may or may not offer.

Your upskilling framework should begin by analyzing your organization’s current situation and defining your initiatives. From there, you can design a skills plan, which will allow you to assess and advise individual employees on their roads to success. This enables you to match jobs to the right workers and increase engagement with employees. Be sure to do your research and select training modules and providers that fit best with your organization’s unique values and mission.

Once implemented, don’t forget to monitor the results of your efforts. As time goes on, you’ll begin to gather valuable data that will help guide future efforts.

Just as reskilling will look different for every company, so, too, will upskilling. Here are some best practices to help guide you:

• Align with your organization’s goals and expectations
• Make upskilling accessible to all employees
• Aim for personalized learning
• Prioritize employee engagement
• Utilize top-of-the-line technologies to advance your employees’ skills and knowledge
• Get buy-in from all levels of the organization

When it comes to reskilling the workforce, you will need to look at how your organization functions currently, how it could function better, and which ways your competitors may be beating you in terms of employee engagement and satisfaction.

For reskilling examples, think of how many companies have now transitioned to full work-from-home or hybrid work environments. In order to successfully complete this transition, many leaders needed to be trained to manage their staffs differently than they used to. Likewise, lower-level employees needed to be trained on new tools and technologies that enabled them to continue doing their jobs when they weren’t in traditional office spaces.

If you’re looking for digital upskilling examples, the advancement of technology and AI (artificial intelligence) is a great example. AI allows employees to spend less time searching for and manually formatting data. Therefore, giving them more time to analyze information and formulate well-thought-out decisions. This allows you the opportunity to let employees lead change, not be dragged along by it. The key comes in the communication—you need to be able to explain to people that their human decision-making skills are more valuable than the time they’re currently spending on mundane tasks that can be performed by computers.

If you’re looking for upskilling ideas, a high-level talent software can help you get started. To better understand the importance of upskilling and reskilling, we invite you to reach out to our team to learn how we can help you engage with your own employees and fill gaps within your own organization. When it comes to reskilling the workforce for the future, it helps to have a great partner by your side.