(Pictured above, some of our Recruitment Consultants enjoying an upskilling and training session on job adverts from this week ).
‘Upskilling’ is the process of teaching or supporting the learning of employees to enhance their current skills and develop new ones.
The idea of upskilling is more than simply inducting a new employee and teaching them your current practices.
It is a committed and well-strategised investment for a company to provide upskilling opportunities to its workforce.
How Do Employers Upskill Staff?
Training & Retraining – Providing internal and external training helps staff upskill their job-specific and managerial skills. This can be very pertinent for staff who may require certain skills to do their job, but don’t get to practice them on a daily basis.
Qualifications & Accreditations – This is important even if the qualifications aren’t mandatory for a specific job. Supporting your staff to be qualified and accredited, teaches and refreshes their industry knowledge, as well as signifies their expertise to your customers.
Mentoring – This doesn’t just have to be for new starters at a business, seasoned employees and senior staff also benefit from mentoring.
Seminars/Webinars - Arranging for staff to attend live seminars offsite or allowing them time to watch educational or industry-specific webinars can be an effective way of upskilling staff with minimal costs or time implicated.
Apprenticeships – Often associated with junior members of staff; however, apprenticeships can be offered to any member of staff. For a company to fund an apprenticeship, an employee is being fully supported in their learning and can earn money while doing so.
Job Swap Schemes – This provides staff with the opportunity to experience working in another department internally or externally. Job swapping exposes employees to different ways of doing things and new concepts that they won’t discover being confined to the same environment every day.
Internal Recruitment & Promotion – Offering existing staff a new role with greater responsibility, authority and salary, is an immense incentive for staff to focus on development. In addition to specific job upskilling, promoting a staff member into a team leader or managerial position will also teach them how to upskill their own teams.
One to Ones – A regular one to one with staff is an opportunity to review performance and development while collaborating with an employee on how they can best improve and what support they need going forward.
What’s The Benefit?
Employee Retention – Providing upskilling and development opportunities is considered one of the biggest employee benefits in today’s current job market. Investing in staff upskilling represents to an employee that they are valued and their employer has confidence in their abilities. This increases company loyalty, thus retention.
Strengthened Workforce – An upskilled workforce ensures that employees are performing at an optimum level, increasing engagement, productivity, morale and profits. Encouraging the mentality of continuous learning, and providing support for this, motivates staff to always try their best and ensure that your business is excelling against your competitors.
Minimise Stagnant Skills – A leading cause for employee dissatisfaction is the feeling that certain skills are being wasted or stagnated. This will often result in talent seeking new employment with companies that will make better use of their skills. Upskilling provides staff the chance to enhance their current skills and share them with their co-workers. Particularly within multi-generational workforces, people and technology skills are held in different regards. Upskilling is an opportunity to get these different generations to work together and share their expertise.
Relationship Building – Co-workers of the same level, teacher to student or boss to subordinate – upskilling is helping someone to be better and it will guarantee positive relationships across your workforce. Upskilling also enhances external relationships with other service providers who may provide your company with training, as well as your customers who will benefit from your team’s enriched skills.
Open To Upskilling?
Upskilling does not have to be a massive expenditure to businesses, but it does promise massive benefits for both the company and staff.
Often, the most valued thing an employer can give staff is the opportunity to do the best job they can.
Our Ambitions Training Division provides over 25 training courses for workers from various industries. Find out more here.