Reskilling and Upskilling: training and reinventing your team

Reinvent yourself… or die!

One of the biggest flaws that working from home entails is losing the feeling of belonging in your company. This is why working on your team’s motivation is key.

As we have discussed in many occasions before, setting the office right next to your living room couch may have some benefits, that’s a given. But it is, nonetheless, a challenge.

One of the biggest flaws that working from home entails is losing that feeling of belonging in your company. Because of this, it is key to work on your team’s motivation. Think of it as a new year’s (or mid year’s, maybe) resolution.

romotion within the company or continuous training are some of the most effective motivational techniques for both the company and the employee. So today we wanted to bring the concepts of upskilling and reskilling up, two ideas based on your staff’s talent that keep growing more and more popular.

What is reskilling?

Reskilling means creating versatile workers.

You may be familiar with this approach already, but under the name of professional retraining. Reskilling wants to train internal talents who know the company and the product better than anyone and who have certain soft skills that will allow them to pivot from one position to another.

It will be necessary for them to learn the hard skills this new position requires, but just like that, talent will stick to your company. The employees will definitely feel they are a crucial part of the team.

What is upskilling?

Upskilling will develop specialised professionals.

Upskilling on its part wants to strengthen abilities within the same position or profile so the employee can perform their job better and take over more responsibilities. The main goal is to squeeze the talent and make the most out of a worker in a tailor-made position for them.

For instance, developing digital skills is one of the key paths these training programs usually go for, improving productivity and avoiding the well-known digital gap.

This way, the employee will always feel like a fish in the water at work, and that’s the only way to get that belonging feeling back, right? Knowing we are taken care of.

Download here this checklist we built to start right now reskilling and upskilling your team! Don’t let go of your talent!

How to conduct a training program to make a change in your company

Now, the question for those head-hunters in charge of training would be: how to do it? Where should we put our aim to give the best training to our staff?

The key is to go from the general to the specific, so here enter the scene those soft skills and hard skills we mentioned before.

It’s a combination of soft skills such as empathy or creativity, and hard skills or technical abilities what makes an employee capable of perform their tasks and grow professionally at the same time.

Soft skills are interpersonal skills concerning how you relate to and communicate with other people or to your creativity. They are natural talent indicatives that, in combination with hard skills, make the employee capable of perform their tasks and grow professionally at the same in the company.

Steps to take if you want to introduce upskilling and reskilling in your company:

1. First, you should take a look to the landscape of your company so as to define the positions or departments that will grow obsolete in time, the new necessities that may arise and the talent you can count on already.
2. Once you’ve elaborated a map of talent, you’ll have to determine who will truly benefit from reskilling and upskilling, because not everybody wishes to promote within the company the same way.
3. After deciding which soft skills you’ll strengthen and the hard skills your company needs to invest in, you will want to create a customised training program that’s clear, practical and focused on each of your employees.

Do not forget that the purpose of this strategy is to motivate the team and to attract and retain talent in your company. Every person is different.

4. And last but not least, it is important for you to keep track of how it’s going from time to time, not only to analyse the impact, but also to study how the reskilling and upskilling process is making your team progress.

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Reskilling and upskilling benefits

Choosing training your staff and aiming for their development will only bring profits to your company:

➳ Talent retaining is something to focus on. Flexible, capable and committed workers will make teamwork easier and more efficient.

➳ Cost reduction must also be kept in mind. Hiring a new employee always comes with associated costs related to training and with an adjustment period with two possible outcomes: a long relationship between the company and this new employee or the necessity of starting the whole process all over again. Reskilling and upskilling do also result in costs because they need some initial training investment, but the future prospects look much brighter!

➳ Reskilling and upskilling are also a guarantee for the future of your company. Having such impact on your employees will translate into better results, improved productivity and strength as a team. You’ll face anything that may come, together!

Honestly, we would not believe you if you told us you are not curious, at least a bit, about reskilling and upskilling, because they both are avant-garde methods every #rebel would choose!

Join the Lifelong Learning movement, because the foundation of your company’s success will always be your workforce and your capacity to reshape. Keep learning and growing every day and you’ll make the difference.

“People change when they realise they have the power to change things”

Paulo Coelho