Why now is the time to think about upskilling your employees
5 May 2022 at 3:42 pm
Upskilling staff has been shown to lead to greater productivity; improved staff morale; lower staff turnover; and less need for supervision.
If the experts are to be believed, upskilling has become one of the most urgent challenges facing the workforce today.
In fact, the World Economic Forum believes it is crucial to post-COVID economic recovery – it estimates that more than half of all employees around the world will need to upskill or reskill by 2025.
It is little surprise then that more and more organisations are turning to upskilling as a way to retain staff, and stay competitive.
There are plenty of opportunities in this. Upskilling staff has been shown to lead to greater productivity; improved staff morale; lower staff turnover; and less need for supervision.
But what does this look like in practice – and how can you do it well?
Firstly, it is important to remember that while conversations about the future of work often focus on automation and the new digital economy, upskilling is not limited to technology. It can include both hard and soft skills, and is really anything that helps workers do their job better.
A tip for organisations wanting to do it well, is to treat upskilling as an investment rather than an expense; and build a culture of development. Learning is not a one-off, it should be an ongoing process.
It is also important to empower your employees to be responsible for their own reskilling – allow them to decide what skills they need, and grant them access to the right tools and support to learn.
A mistake made all too often is to treat training as a “tick box exercise” where everyone is forced to learn the same things. Instead focus on the individual.
And break upskilling into bite-sized chunks. Full training days can be hard to fit into full workloads, and even harder for staff to retain all the information. Instead consider shorter sessions that fit into people’s busy days.
If you’re looking for a place to start when it comes to upskilling your workforce, why not consider revisiting some of Pro Bono Australia’s webinars.
Curated specifically for people working in purpose-driven organisations, the 60-minute sessions can help equip your team with actionable takeaways that they can implement in their day-to-day.
To help make it easier for you to choose, we’ve compiled some of our most popular webinars into packaged topics to help you kickstart your team’s learning.
