In the fast-paced technological environment of today, the professionals are left with only two choices – adapt or perish!
Tasks such as payroll, administrative duties, data collection, which were all once reserved for humans are slowly being taken over by machines.
This has led to an urgency amongst executives to invest in reskilling existing workers, to avoid the epochal transition that our world of work is soon to face.
Every five years, an employee’s skill is half as valuable as before, meaning reskilling is the need of the hour, if the employees have to stay relevant and safeguard their jobs.
What’s more alarming is the statistics that have come forward from credible sources in this subject.
According to a statistics by BBC, an estimated 800 million people are predicted to lose their jobs by 2030, thanks to automation. The kind of skills companies will require will shift too, with profound implications on the career paths individuals will choose.
According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute Report, as many as 375 million workers or roughly 14% of the global workforce may need to change their occupations altogether, as digitization, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence disrupt the world of work.
How Will Reskilling Help The Companies?
In such times, how can companies rely on reskilling their employees, as an alternative towards building a secure work arena? Let’s understand!
1. Happier Employees:
Investing in employees makes them feel valued and gives them a chance to offer something more than their current capabilities. Empowering them with training allows them to see that you acknowledge their worth and appreciate their challenges in the workplace.
A study found that 57% of employees would like additional skills training to progress further in their current company.
Teaching people new and higher-level skills, which equips them to take on more responsible tasks and get a higher salary, is one of the biggest incentives to continue working in a company. Reskilling also creates a work culture of healthy competition where employees are eager to learn more and deliver their best.
2. Increases Productivity:
Upskilling reduces the error rate, as well as the time employees, take to complete tasks.
This yields a faster turnaround time and increases your employees’ performance. You need to divert your investments towards reskilling employees and limit investments in onboarding experts for any particular work.
3. Improves Retention:
Retaining best talent is one of the major challenges faced by every other organisation.
A company that is devoted to enhancing an employee’s career by providing relevant skills through training and upskilling their talents, is way ahead in building a positive rapport with them.
It simply shows that you care for your people and their careers. No one wants to work at a place where the primary objective of a business is just strengthening their bottom line, at the cost of overlooking the mindset and culture of its employees first.
4. Increases Customer Satisfaction:
Employees perform better when they feel they are doing good work. Reskilling their skill sets keeps boredom at bay and infuses innovative streak among them.
They are on top of the game with the latest trends and industry knowledge, which helps them offer the best recommendations and insights to clients and prospects. This, in turn, leads to customer delight, which is great for your business and your bottom line.
5. Attracts New Talent:
A successful business will need to expand or add to its resources in the form of great talent. With happier reskilled employees who feel a sense of purpose associated with their work, they are more likely to recommend or refer their friends, colleagues, relatives for your organisation.
You do not need to put extra efforts into hiring good talent, as you have a pool of diverse people to choose from, thanks to your current employees who feel their career goals are being taken care of.
Reskilling Strategies That Companies Can Use!
An agile and adaptable workforce are the two most important traits for a successful corporate entity. The market is constantly changing and employees need to change right along with it in order to achieve the organizational goals.
Reskilling involves developing new skills or competencies, and organisations can take certain steps to help their workers get re-skilled.
1. Create Personalised Employee Experiences:
The way people consume content today has changed largely, owing to the emergence of social media which is filled with targeted message driven articles, videos and other advertisements.
HR managers will have to come up with such a strategy where content is highly personalised according to an employee’s needs and interests.
The whole concept of reskilling should be to skip the monotonous long day training and to introduce something that catches employees attention, something that they are eager to learn and will help them in their current work roles and in their future careers.
2. Make Learning Shareable:
Whatever an employee learns will be put to best use if it’s shared with others in a manner that is easy and aligned with their personal goals.
A simple example could be an employee that records a 15-minute video on ‘how to’ on his smartphone and create a walkthrough guide for a colleague, as opposed to the long boring help guide that one may have to write, investing a number of hours.
3. Crowdsource Your Organisation’s Knowledge:
Chalk out the brightest employees in your organisation and involve them in the reskilling program.
It becomes increasingly important to capture the skills that are already within your reach and impart them to the rest of the employees. This fulfils dual roles of shared learning as well as skills development.
Gather insight from the current trends, understand what interests your employees and the skills sets in demand according to industry standards and arrive at a cross destination that helps you make the most of your reskilling program.
4. Plan Ahead:
You might be aware of the skills that your employees need today, but what about tomorrow?
Certain skills require an extensive amount of online training experience. More involved or complex abilities may take years to build. This is why it is essential to create a personalised skill development plan for the future.
Develop a comprehensive overview of the skills they need, which corporate learning courses they should take, and other resources available. There should also be a timeline in place that highlights every step of the process. Consider meeting with managers and conducting a workplace observation before creating a reskilling program.
Reskilling is often a matter of necessity in the corporate world. Employees must learn new skills or brush up on old skill sets to improve productivity in the workplace, and to face the challenging times ahead!
