Why Upskilling and Reskilling Are Critical to Future-Proof Your Workforce

Digital transformation, the massive shift to hybrid and remote work, and artificial intelligence have significantly widened the skills gap in the US, making upskilling and reskilling among the most important topics with which business leaders are grappling today. Talent and HR leaders are looking for ways to invest in their people as they attempt to retain and engage workers.

On the surface, both upskilling and reskilling are about increasing your workforce’s skill sets, but they differ in a few key ways. Upskilling is taking someone’s current skills and training them for tomorrow’s use cases. A great example of that is teaching a data entry clerk to become a data scientist. Both roles are heavily data-driven. However, the need for manual data entry is slowly waning thanks to technology, while the need for someone who can understand the data and apply it to business outcomes is on the rise.

Reskilling, on the other hand, involves training someone on an entirely new set of skills to prepare them for a different role within the company, such as teaching that data entry clerk to transition into a role in IT or customer service.

Combining upskilling and reskilling can future-proof your workforce by ensuring that employees meet the requirements of the modern age. This helps workers stay relevant in their fields and provides employers with a stronger, more skilled workforce that produces better results, less turnover, and a greater competitive advantage.

Less than a decade ago, many people would have dismissed the idea that a significant portion of the workforce would be forced to work remotely without ever stepping foot inside an office. As technology has increased and more digital tools have become available, remote work has been a nearly frictionless experience for some employees and managers. For others, upskilling and reskilling became an instant reality.

Remote and hybrid work is just one example of a recent and significant technologically-backed shift driving the need to upskill workers at every level. However, due to digital transformation, many more skill gaps exist in the workforce today.

According to a McKinsey Global Survey that examined the future of work, “companies lack the talent they will need in the future: 44 percent of respondents say their organizations will face skill gaps within the next five years, and another 43 percent report existing skill gaps.”

Many other studies support the need for upskilling and reskilling. For example, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 estimates that by 2025, machines may displace 85 million jobs, but 97 million new roles may emerge due to a new dynamic between people and technology. The artificial intelligence and automation movement is now known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution and, as with any revolution, the change will be dramatic and challenging, especially for workers.

The disruption caused by the Fourth Industrial Revolution will mean that employees need skills that cannot be automated. In other words, workers need to add more value to their roles—or emerging technologies may threaten their positions.

Upskilling and reskilling initiatives are a business imperative for organizations to remain agile and for employees to stay relevant in the workforce.

Watch our Careerminds webinar “Enhance Your Upskilling Strategy with 4 Experts” to learn more about how to take advantage of these upskilling and reskilling benefits.

Many employers have already made significant investments in upskilling and reskilling their workforces. Global professional services company Accenture is one such employer, investing approximately $900,000 annually to create millions of training hours dedicated to training and developing its people.

Funding alone won’t address the issue, however. Companies must determine who is responsible for ensuring workers’ future—is it solely the employer, or are employees equally accountable too?

On one hand, employers should want their staff to be as skilled as possible so that they perform better, are engaged, and are willing to stick around and adapt quickly to emerging needs. On the other hand, employees should be responsible for maintaining and learning skills to keep themselves relevant in the job market because, at the end of the day, their livelihoods are at stake.

The answer is that it’s both. No particular party is entirely responsible for upskilling and reskilling.

Employees should do their best to learn technical skills and soft skills, such as leadership, communication, and agility. Such transferable skills go a long way no matter the job. Workers also should be open and willing to learn new things, put in the time to develop new skills, and set achievable, personal goals to ensure they continue growing.
The good news is that workers are on board with that idea. PwC’s 2021 Hopes and Fears Survey of more than 32,500 people worldwide found that 77 percent “are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain.”

How Companies Should Help Upskill and Reskill Their Employees
As for companies, they need to do their part by providing resources for staff to use, especially resources that directly explain to workers how they should perform in a new or elevated role. That could entail holding learning events, providing subject matter expertise, and creating employee development plans.

Employers also should focus on leadership and management to foster a culture of learning that enables workers to succeed.

Creating a reskilling or upskilling program at your organization can take on many different forms and requires much planning. I spoke with Nicole Coletta, Accenture’s director of people architecture, to better understand how the company views skills training and how other organizations can start upskilling their workforce.

Coletta, who began this journey more than five years ago, says that the first step Accenture took to begin upskilling was to understand where workers’ current skill sets lie. To do so, the company began creating holistic skill profiles that precisely identify the breadth and depth of an individual’s skills. The profiles define this depth of skill as how specialized a person is in that one skill, and the breadth of skill is the collection of skills that represent the business needs.
Coletta also notes the importance of the company having a skills taxonomy that people leaders can share and use across HR processes in support of the business (e.g., learning, recruiting, and performance).

After Accenture created the holistic skills profiles, the company’s platforms, systems, and algorithms could present personalized training opportunities based on an individual’s needs and what future needs the market has indicated will be in demand soon. That approach sets the stage for an employee’s career path.
Many organizations use career paths as a road map to success. Career pathing helps employees understand what skills and requirements they will need to achieve success.
“A career path is personal to each individual employee and helps them to break down the steps needed to achieve their long-term career goals and progress their career either laterally or through promotion,” notes the Talent Guard blog post “Reskilling and Upskilling: A Strategic Response to Changing Skill Demands.” Furthermore, it explains that career pathing “requires an understanding of the knowledge, skills and personal traits required and helps to identify the specialized skills and additional training needed to fulfill those aspirations.”

Establishing an infrastructure that helps employees meet future job demands and identify hidden skills helps organizations create a culture of talent mobility, which increases engagement, fulfillment, and retention.

Coletta says that one of the challenges is coaching employees to become more accustomed to continually monitoring their skill profiles and making sure they’re updated, so that staff can be best positioned for opportunities as they arise. The company provides the tools employees need to grow, but they must take time to monitor their progress and be willing to learn.

Another huge factor to consider is speed. Agility is often touted in many workplace processes, and it applies to upskilling and reskilling too. Agile learning occurs when employees and employers embrace a culture of learning that allows for quick pivots and opportunities to take on knowledge whenever needed.

Coletta recognizes that speed is a significant factor at Accenture because it is critical to quickly responding to clients’ talent needs. The company addresses speed through the algorithms it has pioneered that enable workers to recognize their skill gaps and promptly incorporate and adapt training to respond to market needs.

However, one of the significant hurdles is helping people become more comfortable trusting the data and acting upon the suggestions the data reveals. Similarly, it’s also vital for business leaders to buy into the process.

Employees at every level should feel empowered to seek and gain new knowledge. Empowering staff to be lifelong learners and own their professional journey aids in their development of unique expertise and intelligence that can be shared across the enterprise.

While there will always be challenges to upskilling and reskilling, Coletta remains positive, looking forward to a future where skills training becomes even more normalized and adopted.

“The market, in general, has a unique opportunity to really invest in the people currently in the workforce,” she says. “We can really make this great, and we really invest in the people who are willing and want to work to reinvent themselves. In a way, we all need to come together and do it.”

Although that type of investment may be out of reach for many companies, the message is that organizations must create an environment of learning. How that environment will look will largely depend on the company’s budget, timeframe, and other factors. Devising action plans and enabling and empowering workers will help future-proof your organization while also increasing engagement and retention rates.

Ensuring employees continuously develop their skills now and well into the future is vital for companies to remain competitive. Numerous studies and reports show that skills gaps are increasing, and employers that ignore this issue will be left behind.

Upskilling and reskilling programs are crucial to solving talent development issues before they arise. Programs can differ from company to company, but employers should take some aspects of upskilling and reskilling as boilerplate initiatives, such as:

• Creating a culture of learning from top to bottom
• Ensuring employees understand their current skills, the gaps they may have, and the opportunities available to them
• Setting organization development goals to empower all employees to increase their knowledge and skill sets
• Adopting an agile mindset instead of a traditional one when it comes to learning
• Developing career paths so that employees fully understand their career trajectory

Done correctly, upskilling and reskilling provide benefits to both employees and employers. If ignored or done incorrectly, however, organizations will find themselves needing to reduce their workforce, leaving outplacement firms to take charge of helping workers build skills in order to transition them into new jobs.

In the end, employees who upskill and reskill can rest assured that they are staying relevant in the job market and excelling in their careers, while employers will be enjoying less turnover, more engagement, and more productivity from their workforce.

If you’re looking for solutions to upskill and reskill your workforce, Careerminds’ Career Development Coaching uses a flexible and blended approach to work with employees at all levels and tenure to help them bridge their skill gaps.

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Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee is the President of Careerminds, a global outplacement company based in Wilmington, Delaware. He has over 20 years of human resource, outplacement, and career consulting experience. He has his bachelor’s in psychology and holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Louisiana Tech University. He is active in SHRM and ATD. Raymond’s been featured on SiriusXM Business Radio, CareerTalk, and the Wall Street Journal and he’s published a book titled, Clocking Out: A Stress-Free Guide to Career Transitions.