Amid Today’s Talent Shortage, Upskilling Is an Essential Workplace Benefit

Establishing a learning culture is key to future business success.

While we remain in the throes of a pandemic, talent concerns—including recruiting and retention, skills development, capacity, and availability—have emerged as a threat to the global economic outlook. In fact, recent data shows there were more job openings in the United States this spring than before the pandemic hit in March 2020. There were also fewer people in the labor force, which suggests that the millions of workers who were displaced during the pandemic are still on the sidelines of the job market.

In addition to the talent shortfall, employers are continuing to see a skills gap among both their current employees and new hires, particularly in today’s hybrid environment driven by digital processes. Even before the pandemic, corporate leaders were voicing concerns about threats to their business from the global skills shortage. PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO survey found that the number of business leaders who expressed concerns was already high in 2019, averaging 79 percent.

As the workforce skills gap continues to hinder employers, and companies look to attract and retain talent that can meet their business objectives, upskilling should be a central focus of talent strategies. Once new hires are made, companies must help workers rapidly climb the learning curve so they can develop the skills needed for their jobs—today and in the future—and fill the voids of the talent shortfall. No longer just a work perk offered by some employers, upskilling should instead be treated as a critical worker benefit on par with paid time off and retirement plans.

Upskilling and Reskilling in the Digital Era

We have recently seen an uptick in the number of companies pivoting from role-based to skills-based hiring. Upskilling is an essential element of this shift and is more than just learning. It’s a change in mindset within the organization; it’s about preparing employees for a technology-based future and determining which skills are needed now and moving forward.

This does not suggest every employee will be in a tech-focused role. Still, it reiterates that thriving in the future of work will require employees to understand the implications of technology on the organization’s business function. For many, this seems far removed from the jobs they do. But few, if any, of us can entirely avoid using technology—even if we use it only to check emails or take customer orders.

Upskilling and reskilling can help employees better prepare for the future. Both are an extension of professional development, and doing them right will likely require partnership with industry groups or learning establishments that can help employers understand what they can and should be offering to current employees and new hires.

To start, organizations should engage with their employees in regular pulse checks. This allows leaders to see what skills employees hope to gain, how they feel about their career path progression, and which learning-related corporate policies (e.g., tuition and course reimbursement) they would like to leverage. These pulse checks also give the management team insight into employee flight risk and how best to retain its current talent.

Lifelong Learning Is a Business and Employee Benefit

The digital world has prompted an increased commitment from many companies’ leadership teams to focus on the workforce, including the well-being, career development, and investment in the learning needed for employees to excel. Establishing a learning culture is key to future business success, which is why the leadership team—from the top down—must be proponents for continuous learning. A good first step to embedding learning into a company’s culture is to ensure that each function within a business has a dedicated training leader who reinforces upskilling as a critical priority.

Additional ways to promote a learning culture include investing in one-to-one and volume training courses, building training into continuous performance management objectives, encouraging organizations to invest in mentorship programs, and assigning learning buddies.

Lifelong learning should be offered to all, ideally as a term of employment, but at least as an optional benefit.

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An organization’s definition of learning and development should also be reviewed. Too often, professional development focuses on job-related skills and overlooks the person, which can create broader issues. Self-management, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork skills—along with ongoing alignment with the company’s overall business strategy—are equally needed to get the best results for the future of work. Without these, a less visible skills gap is being created.

Some companies are already making great strides in creating internal, lifelong learning programs that grow talent internally. From low-waged operatives to richly compensated executives, this type of programmatic approach helps set no limits to how high anyone can climb in an organization. This opportunity for growth is a significant benefit, and is often considered a far greater compensation than small salary increases, because it may lead to far higher salaried positions in the future.

For the employer, learning programs keep the cost of employee acquisition to a minimum. They also enable the best people to be homegrown and develop the evolving skills needed as the world becomes more automated and standardized.

Upskilling opportunities will continue to be an essential factor in attracting new talent and retaining current employees in today’s job landscape. As job opportunities remain vacant and workforces battle a gap in skills, upskilling will be critical for companies to recover from the pandemic and ensure employees are well-equipped to do their jobs. Organizations should establish a learning culture that promotes, supports, and encourages its employees to continue learning, adopting new skills, and making investments in their own professional growth and future. Those companies that do will reap the rewards of a loyal, engaged, and productive workforce.

Neha Trivedi, MA, CPTM, is a director on the global talent development team focused on all-colleague learning at Alight Solutions.

From: BenefitsPRO

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