3 Keys to An Impactful Upskilling Training Initiative

Employees want to upskill. Recent research has shown that the best way for companies to attract and retain talent is to offer programs that help them upskill and reskill in their careers, giving them a future at the company or beyond. Upskilling is one of the most important benefits a company can offer in 2021 because it shows team members that the company is willing to invest in them in the present and in the future.

Upskilling is both a necessity and a benefit for employees. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2022, 54% of employees will need to upskill significantly to keep up with the changing demands of their jobs. This can mean technical training, learning new digital skills, or even upskilling to stay competitive in a changing market. Business has changed so dramatically over the last two years that upskilling is the natural next step for employees and employers alike.

But the process of upskilling brings more to the table than just a competitive edge. Upskilling can help employees feel satisfied at work, provide movement between departments or roles, and improve overall retention rates.

Successful upskilling begins with a learning and development strategy. You cannot build a beneficial upskilling training initiative without looking at the whole picture of employee learning. This will, of course, vary by industry, but every role and every department can benefit from an upskilling training initiative.

Start with the right tools

As with every project, you need access to the right tools in order to achieve the end goal. You cannot help your employees upskill if you do not give them access to learning technology that supports their unique goals. As companies prioritize employee training, they should also prioritize training technology. It’s nearing the end of the year, and budgets are being reworked in preparation for 2022. We have settled into what, for many companies, is the future of work—hybrid and remote workstyles—and we are more familiar with the needs within our working communities.

Now is the time to invest in a digital LMS platform that makes learning accessible no matter where employees are or how work styles have changed in the last year. The best way to promote engagement with training is to make it easy to complete. With digital learning management systems like ExpertusONE, all training materials are housed within the platform—meaning that employees don’t have to download separate systems or interact with content outside of the platform itself. This makes learning streamlined, and the ExpertusONE LMS also integrates with apps like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams to encourage easy access to training materials.

The most important part of choosing an LMS platform that will support upskilling initiatives is that it should be able to cater to each employee’s needs. Many learning management technologies have stale, impersonal interfaces that don’t cater to employees’ needs—everyone takes the same courses, listens to the same audio, interacts with the same presentation slides, and so on. But in 2021 (and into 2022), we have the technology to support more engaged learning that meets unique learning objectives. For example, ExpertusONE’s enterprise LMS uses AI and machine learning to recommend relevant courses to each user based on their skill set, their learning needs, and even their individual interests. It takes the guesswork out of upskilling for both the employee and the employer by creating a customized course catalog to encourage engaged learning.

Related post: 6 Essential Elements to Determine the Best LMS Platform for Your Company

Identify missing skill sets, course offerings, and training objectives

In the long history of employee training, most courses focus on mandatory skills, HR-driven initiatives, or specified certifications. These all, of course, play an essential part in the unique industries they serve. It is important that medical sales representatives have the training they need for the tools they sell, and these types of courses will never lose their importance. But in order to craft an upskilling training initiative, company leaders must look at the larger picture of their workplace and determine where new skills are needed—outside of the normal certifications and mandatory courses.

At the beginning of the year, Gartner released new thought leadership on the concept of skill adjacencies—how important it is to recognize when employees or potential hires have skill sets that are adjacent to ones on your list of requirements.

The underlying principle here is that, in order for companies to build leading teams, they may need to widen the perspective through which they evaluate talent. Similarly, company leaders must consider this when crafting upskilling initiatives. They should ask questions like, “What type of training could contribute to the overall ecosystem in this department?” For sales departments, that may be a certification to help upskill the entire group in a highly specific way. It could also mean offering leadership, communication, or productivity courses that support the entire employee experience.

Upskilling can look like a highly specific, technical course. It can also look like a broader, more comprehensive education that supports soft skills like communication, collaboration, and leadership.

Create multiple learning pathways and offer freedom to employees

Upskilling initiatives will lose their allure if companies apply them using the same strategies they did for onboarding and required training. Upskilling is one manifestation of the total overhaul most training programs must undergo in order to achieve the maximum impact of learning and development. Traditionally, training initiatives were added to the list of to-dos each employee must manage, and they were usually boring, cumbersome, or a hindrance to regular workflow.

Related post: Why a Digital LMS Creates Better Employee Experiences

Employers who invest in upskilling initiatives must understand that this requires a new learning model. Upskilling initiatives require a more flexible learning environment than traditional employee training.

There are two key goals driving an upskilling initiative: boosting employee retention in the company and cultivating a competitive edge in the industry. Many leaders will prioritize the second, the competitive advantage element, above the first—but this will not stand on its own.

Engaged employees stick around, and upskilling offers them a unique opportunity to explore their careers and their interests within their workday—a freedom that employees value highly in today’s working world. This is why companies must create multiple learning pathways and flexible training programs so that employees can take in courses and content on their own time and in a way that suits their needs and interests.

In practice, this looks like offering a variety of courses on a given subject or within a given industry so that employees can pick and choose whichever one interests them. It means that upskilling initiatives will have longer timelines and more flexible learning goals so that employees can complete courses when they have the most brain power to take in information (instead of adding to already-full plates of work).

Upskilling initiatives serve the employee so that they can serve the company, and freedom and flexibility are core tenets here. Technology can also support these goals. ExpertusONE’s digital LMS platform makes learning flexible with mobile and desktop versions of the application. It integrates with commonly used workplace tech to make courses accessible, and learning can even happen offline—like if an employee wants to optimize their train commute by taking an upskilling course on the lms mobile app while on the subway.

Upskilling is the future of employee training, and it will impact how we think about talent, employee retention, and competition across industries. These early investments we make in upskilling initiatives will ultimately yield more innovative industries because companies will have invested in their employees, giving them new stepping stones to achieve higher goals within their fields.