Why Getting Granular about Skills is the Key to Upskilling and Reskilling

Why are upskilling and reskilling so important?

The terms “reskilling” and “upskilling” are frequently used in business and HR circles, but it’s important to understand what each means in the context of workforce development.

Upskilling refers to enhancing an employee’s existing skills, often to increase their proficiency in the role they already have or to enable them to take on new responsibilities within the same area (e.g. leadership training in order to prepare somebody for a management position).

Reskilling, on the other hand, focuses on teaching an employee new skills unconnected with their existing capabilities enabling them to transition to a completely different role or job function.

Which one an organisation picks depends very much on how the skills their employees already have map onto the skills they expect to need in the future.

Whatever the mix, a combination of upskilling and reskilling is essential as businesses face an increasingly fast-paced and uncertain future. In a global survey, McKinsey found that 87 per cent of business executives and managers are already experiencing skills gaps or expect to within the next five years.

As routine tasks become automated, the skills in demand are changing in ways that workers are not prepared for, making reskilling and upskilling strategies essential methods of keeping an employer’s workers relevant. In a study by Gallup, for example, less than half of workers strongly agreed that they had the skills required to perform exceptionally in their roles. As skills needs change, this number will only go up. 

This is true for all workers, even CEOs or those in tech. Jobs related to software development, cybersecurity, and data analysis, for example, are all seeing higher demand, yet these roles are also shifting as new technologies and methodologies come into play.

By employing upskilling and reskilling initiatives in their organisations, employers are investing in developing their home-grown capability, fostering loyalty and engagement in their existing workforce as they grasp fresh opportunities for themselves at the same time as they make new opportunities possible for their organisations.

What do organisations need to know to make upskilling and reskilling work best?

Signing on to an organisation-wide online course subscription, getting HR to send out an all-staff email, and ticking off the “skills training” box isn’t going to be enough in this day and age. Here are a few things businesses need to know if they are going to make their upskilling and reskilling programs a success:

• A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work – the most common upskilling and reskilling programs can often be too generic to capture the best of their participants. In the view of efficiency and usually driven by lack of information, organisations send whole teams or even departments to communication workshops, leadership seminars, and digital skills courses. While these training sessions will almost certainly benefit some of them, many workers who already have the skills being taught would by and large have benefitted from training that better matched their skills sets. It is essential to recognise that while one employee may need advanced digital marketing skills another may need to learn the basics of project management. If upskilling and reskilling programs are to be effective, if they are to boost rather than drain morale, and if they are going to deliver bang-for-buck, businesses need to tailor their programs to the specific needs of their employees.
  
  
• Skill requirements are constantly changing – upskilling and reskilling programs need to be designed to be adaptable in order to accommodate for the pace of change in the workplace today. Devoting large sums to rigid training programs is risky because the precise character of the skills that will be needed tomorrow is unlikely to be the same two years from now. This means that the best upskilling and reskilling initiatives are wrapped together with those that develop a culture of continuous and lifelong learning for an organisation’s workforce. It also raises the importance of keeping an up-to-date catalogue of employee’s skills so that upskilling and reskilling programs can be adapted to the needs of employees who are likely accruing skills independently of work.
  
  
• Employee engagement is critical – not only in the sense of desiring to learn, employee engagement is an essential ingredient to successful upskilling and reskilling programs in that by actively shaping these programs, employees are most likely to embed their own aspiration and development needs. The gains are clear enough: targeted learning, higher morale, and vested motivation. By ensuring that employees have a steering role in their own and their organisation’s future, employers are more likely to have the outcomes of their upskilling and reskilling programs stick. Workers are more likely to use their new skills effectively when it is they themselves who chose to acquire them.

How does granular skills identification help upskilling and reskilling?

Reskilling and upskilling efforts are often undermined when organisations don’t have a clear understanding of the specific skills their employees already have. While broad categories of skills such as “leadership” or “data analysis” are useful, they are far too generic to be effective in designing training programs.

To truly understand how to reskill and upskill employees, businesses must go beyond the surface and break down their employees’ skills to the task level. “Data analysis” could break down into “data wrangling”, “SQL”, “linear regression modelling” and a host of other more granularly defined skills. The more granularly you can identify employees’ skills the better as it allows for training to target specific gaps in what they are able to do without repeating content or teaching workers what they already know.

When upskilling and reskilling programs are built on the basis of granular skills identification, especially in close cooperation with employees, they far better address the three core points in the section above. Granular skills identification ensures that training programs are targeted and not one-size-fits all. Undertaken regularly they ensure upskilling and reskilling initiatives are adapted regularly to meet both workers’ changing skill sets and their changing needs. And they bake employee engagement into the process.

Identifying skills granularly down to the task-level can also help organisations make more informed decisions regarding the allocation of their human resources (better: skills resources). Partnered with effective training programs, companies can match employees to the roles that suit them best based not only on their past experience and current capabilities, but also the skills they are set to acquire.

Why aren’t existing HR systems pulling their weight?

Modern HR systems have evolved to handle employee records, performance reviews and recruitment pipelines, but very few have been designed with granular skills identification and skills management in mind. But if HR platforms are to be put in the service of upskilling and reskilling programs or, more broadly, to a skills-based organisation, they need to be built to identify, assess, track, and develop myriad and evolving skill sets across an organisation’s workforce.

While business leaders may be aware of the benefits of identifying skills granularly at a task-level and building their training initiatives on this basis, without the correct systems in place, carrying this out in practice can be overwhelming.

A first step is to seek out HR solutions that do not rely on outdated or inflexible skills frameworks that broadly categorise skills and make it difficult to align upskilling and reskilling programs dynamically to both the needs of employees and their employers.

How can technology enable upskilling and reskilling?

As much as technology is compelling businesses to adopt effective upskilling and reskilling strategies, it is also making those strategies possible in ways that were not just a few years ago. Machine learning and other technologies under the umbrella of “artificial intelligence” are especially useful, allowing employers to recognise the skills of their workforce, map them against skills taxonomies, and build training programs that allow future workers and future work to meet.

The following are just a few possibilities made possible by tech:

• AI-powered skills mapping – AI-powered tools like SkillsAware can analyse employee’s resumes, job descriptions, qualifications, and other evidence for skills to map out the precise skills they have against the skills goals of an organisation. By analysing these together, skills platforms can build detailed skills profiles that can be used to develop personalised training pathways.
  
  
• Next-gen Learning Management Systems (LMS) – Next-generation learning management systems are designed to facilitate continuous learning by offering personalised learning paths based on an individual’s skill profile. When plugged into AI-powered skills recognition platforms, they can allow employers to direct, track, and evaluate their employees’ progress on their upskilling or reskilling journeys.
  
  
• Virtual and augmented reality – Virtual reality and simulation platforms allow for task-specific training in highly technical or sensitive fields like engineering or healthcare. In a controlled environment, workers can gain new skills without risks and organisations can develop a culture of engagement and continuous learning without exorbitant costs.

SkillsAware is the answer

As many questions as there are pertaining to upskilling and reskilling in today’s fast-paced business environment, SkillsAware has the answers. At SkillsAware we have solved the challenges businesses face in making skills-based organisations work. Contact us today to learn more about how SkillsAware can build a more skilful workforce.