Why Is Reskilling Necessary?

The corporate world is in the midst of a rapidly changing landscape in regard to technology and the skills needed to keep ahead of competitors. Reskilling your employees so that they have what it takes to be successful — and for your organization to be successful — will, thus, become critical for the survival of any business.

This need is widespread; according to the World Economic Forum, by 2022, no fewer than 54% of all employees will require significant reskilling and upskilling.

But, as with any learning experience, the acquisition of skills should be a continuous process rather than a one-time event; the end of each quarter is too late to start considering skills. The challenge, then, is how to create an ongoing, continuous reskilling learning environment so that your company stays ahead of the curve.

Performance Consulting Comes First

In order to create an ideal learning environment, you’ll need to identify what the skills landscape looks like at your organization. Which skills do your employees already have, and which ones need work? This process may require you to evaluate your current learning strategies, identify performance gaps through pre-assessments and surveys, and assess areas for organizational growth. Once you have a clear idea of your current state, you’ll need to put skills at the center of this business transformation.

Focus on Skills

If you’re looking to map skills to your business goals, it may be beneficial to shift the process of professional growth within your organization. Rather than promoting employees through strict job roles, consider the feasibility of adopting a skills-based promotional path — one that is focused on skill pools and having the best tool set for a given task.

Additionally, integrate continuous learning and reskilling into everyday workplace activities in an ongoing manner rather than offering a single training event. Then, work to incorporate the skills mindset into your organization’s employment deal by hiring and training on specific skills in anticipation of future needs.

Once you’ve completed the performance consulting to gain insight into skill needs and shifted the company toward a skill-centered culture, you’ll need to consider what the training environment itself should look like. Given that your workforce has diverse skill sets and needs, it’s important to make a learning environment that’s flexible for everyone.

A Learning Environment for All Learners

Learning environments consist of multifaceted training experiences that are ongoing and continually supportive. In contrast, traditional training in instructor-led lecture settings tends to fit all the knowledge into a single session. When it comes to reskilling, your employees will be at different skill levels, depending on their experience and fields of expertise, so they may learn best with different training delivery methods.

Using custom eLearning activities like branching scenarios and simulations in your learning environment enables learners to engage in realistic and applicable situations without risk. This approach can help build skills more quickly than traditional training. As well as this type of structured learning, allow for more flexible and informal training, like mentorships and peer-to-peer guidance with planned skill-building. See which employees share similar interests, and help them help each other gain complementary skills.

Timelines for gaining skills are an important consideration, but holding too strictly to one approach can be limiting. Embrace both synchronous and asynchronous learning to accommodate all employees. Make training available through both digital training and small mentorship sessions. Finally, knowledge repositories and skill-building videos can create a virtual environment for learners to follow their own path, exploring their own interests at their own pace.

Reskilling for the Future

Continuous reskilling will be critical to the future success of your business, so plan ahead for how your organization will develop the skills of its employees. That being said, some skills will take time to develop, so consider your needs in the years to come as well as your current skills gaps. The World Economic Forum estimates that of the people who need reskilling by 2022, 35% will likely require additional training of up to six months.

Managers and business leaders should always be in conversation about what the workplace culture needs in regard to reskilling and how your people strategy should adapt. Consider hybrid approaches, center the organization on skills-building, and focus your efforts on performance and which gaps to address, and your continuous reskilling efforts will be successful.