The Importance of Upskilling and Reskilling for Businesses and Employees

Upskilling and reskilling are two strategies that have seen widespread adoption due to the rapidly evolving labor landscape and accelerated pace of technology, innovation, and automation. By 2025, about 85 million jobs may become partially or fully automated, according to research by the World Economic Forum.

Consecutively, about 97 million new roles will also be created to focus on the division of labor between man and machine.

In line with this, now, more than ever, there is a need to recruit candidates who are adaptable and resilient enough to thrive, regardless of the rigors of the constantly changing workplace setting.

These statistics also highlight the need to enhance existing competencies through upskilling or take an entirely new direction by reskilling to avoid redundancy and prepare employees and businesses for the future of work.

What are upskilling and reskilling?

In the context of an organization’s learning and development strategy, upskilling and reskilling incorporate educational opportunities provided by a business to its employees. However, while both terms have been employed interchangeably, they have significant differences.

Upskilling involves the provision of training opportunities that help to improve an employee’s existing skills and competencies, fostering better growth in their current role and providing the organization with added value.

On the other hand, reskilling essentially looks to retrain an employee for a different position requiring a new set of skills. As part of the current workforce climate, organizations in different industries must deal with redundancy, especially following the rapid prevalence of technology and automation. In this case,

employers will seek to retain workers by training them in a new discipline. While this is the prevalent trigger for reskilling, companies can also engage in this strategy for several other reasons.

Upskilling and reskilling have recently been associated with developing technological competencies. However, they are also essential for further developing soft skills. Whichever the case, they have become critical components for businesses to remain relevant in the highly competitive environment.

Why are upskilling and reskilling important?

Upskilling and reskilling offer several benefits to employees and businesses alike. This strategy is proven to provide a significant return on investment for employers. Organizations that include continued learning and development as part of their workplace culture are known to feature better job satisfaction, remain competitive, and improve their bottom line by exposing the full potential of their current workforce.

For employees, reskilling or upskilling within an organization results in diverse career paths, more advancement opportunities, and the chance to discover and develop new skills. Here are some other features that highlight the importance of upskilling and reskilling.

Attracting and retaining the best professionals

Continued learning, skill development, and career advancement opportunities are effective strategies for improving job satisfaction, especially in the current job landscape. Following the Great Resignation, most professionals seek organizations that provide career development opportunities, and these strategies will undoubtedly help to attract some of the best professionals.

Additionally, employees today value job security and long-term roles highly. Therefore, they are likely to explore positions that can provide the chance to change paths or grow as a professional without any significant destabilization. In the near future, businesses will be responsible for providing development opportunities, as this will be a non-negotiable for attracting the best talents.

Fostering organizational growth

Upskilling and reskilling focus on professionals who understand and show commitment to the organization’s culture, structure and mission. This makes it a lot easier to improve the organization across different facets. By exposing existing workers to development opportunities, the company becomes poised to retain staff long-term and adapt to the demand for new competencies.

Employees open to such opportunities would adapt quickly and learn relevant business management strategies, such as implementing workforce management solutions, finance strategies, and inventory management. Businesses can create a healthy and competent workforce capable of meeting future industry demands through upskilling and reskilling.

Boosting soft skills

It might seem counter-intuitive, but the prevalence of technology in the workplace highlights the need for professionals to build and develop soft skills. As more and more businesses become heavily reliant on technology, mostly automation, specific inherent competencies such as communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving can suffer. This is especially true with the prevalence of remote work.

For now, most businesses have identified the potential challenge of maintaining and developing a workforce with valuable soft skills. Businesses can improve this through upskilling and reskilling. Interpersonal skills are just as essential as analytical and technical competencies. Hence, employees can place themselves highly by upskilling in several interpersonal skills.

Fostering business agility

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have strived to emulate the practices of other corporations that thrived during the crisis, one being business agility. Now, you may be wondering, what is business agility? It refers to how quickly a business can move from one objective to another.

Business agility incorporates agility into an organization’s culture, leadership, strategy, and governance, adding value to all stakeholders. This, and more, are explored in depth in Aston University’s MSc Business and Management Suite.

Upskilling and reskilling can serve as practical approaches to fostering business agility. Professionals can learn the intricacies of developing a dynamic business structure and how effectively they can function to achieve organizational goals. Additionally, every agile business features a sense of stability. As such, this would reinforce good practices and unleash employee talents.

Developing digital technologies

Having discussed the importance of interpersonal skills in the current workforce environment, professionals must also exhibit technical proficiency to keep up with advancements. Technology has become an integral part of every business operation, and to effectively employ this aspect, employees must possess relevant knowledge and competencies.

Typically, some of the basic technological competencies are prevalent among new-generation employees. Hence, to foster inclusion and mitigate the risks of redundancy, there is a need to upskill or reskill the older workforce on most of these digital skills. This would undoubtedly lead to improved performances as employees master their current roles and help the business to accommodate evolving demands.

For some time now, the world has been changing at an alarming rate, mostly highlighted by the pandemic. Novel technologies are gradually replacing older ones, and the rapid pace of this change prompts businesses to reevaluate their employment and skilling strategies. As such, businesses must look to consistently improve relevant skills among their employees through upskilling and reskilling.

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