Looking to upskill your tech teams this year? Wondering how to ensure that your upskilling efforts yield the desired results? To help you, we sat down with our Senior People Business Partner, Daisy Kennedy, to distil five actionable steps you can take to establish effective upskilling strategies in 2024 and beyond.
Why is upskilling a cost-effective alternative to hiring new talent?
As you plan, project, and compile your upskilling blueprint for 2024, there will no doubt be one thing at the top of your priority list: the right talent.
The great tech skills shortage rolls on while cloud technology continues to advance. As a result, the cost of hiring established talent from an increasingly competitive talent pool continues to climb.
As a result, businesses are looking for alternative solutions to help fill their skills gaps and give them access to the tech expertise necessary to get maximum value from their investments, particularly when it comes to their cloud technology implementation. This critical undertaking can feel like an uphill battle, with 70% of businesses feeling that skills are becoming obsolete more quickly as technology accelerates.
Upskilling is an impactful and cost-effective solution to counter this. More and more organizations are turning to their existing talent to meet their need for in-demand cloud skills, focusing on developing and reskilling their people into valuable cloud professionals.
The average cost of upskilling an existing employee is around $1,300, while the average recruitment costs to hire a new candidate come in at around $4,425. And that’s before you factor in skyrocketing salaries for experienced tech candidates.
Investing in the talent you already have and building skills in-house is a powerful way to close any gaps. Not only that; upskilling is also proven to boost employee engagement and retention rates.
With that in mind, here are 5 steps you can take to create a truly impactful upskilling strategy for 2024.
Step 1: Tailor your learning paths to the needs of your staff
The skill sets your organization needs to develop will be unique to your business. What kind of upskilling programs you should be implementing will depend on a multitude of factors, including your goals, your cloud technology stack, and your people. A cookie-cutter approach to upskilling might equip your team with the basics, but to get real value from such development programs requires some due diligence. Digging into your skills gaps, finding out how people learn best, and taking into account the individual talents and ambitions of your employees will give you an infinitely better ROI.
When conducting thorough assessments of existing skills and competencies in your teams, remember to think inclusively. Take into account how different people work, how they respond to assessments, and the best ways they believe they can showcase their skills. Ensuring the assessment process is inclusive and considers diverse perspectives and experiences will help you identify your skill gaps more accurately and make your employees feel empowered and motivated by the process. Engaging with employees to obtain a precise and detailed skills gap analysis allows you to create tailored learning pathways that acknowledge individual capabilities, learning styles, and skill levels.
Make sure you also consider the unique needs of underrepresented groups within your teams. This includes employees who’ve taken an alternative route into their role, come from non-traditional educational backgrounds, or are neurodivergent.
Your upskilling outcomes should also be measurable. Doing this will ensure that your progress can be regularly reviewed, and the plan can be adjusted and improved over time.
These bespoke upskilling plans should not only be relevant to the employee and their role, but they also need to be fair and achievable. This might mean providing additional resources and support where necessary, but the extra care and preparation that goes into crafting personalized upskilling plans will make them far more effective. An involved employee is a happier, more engaged, and more skilled employee.
Step 2: Create a culture of collaborative learning
The most successful upskilling strategies are the ones that seep into an organization’s DNA and become more than programs and learning paths; they become part of the company culture.
Knowledge-sharing is a hugely effective way to organically grow skills across your teams. The more you foster a culture of collaboration and openness, the more effectively valuable skills will diffuse throughout your organization.
In essence, you want your people to see change as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Employees who are accustomed to updating their skill sets will be better positioned to minimize the impact that change can have on your organization. And they’ll be more open to learning new things as your business needs evolve.
Knowledge should be flowing all the time, permeating teams through osmosis. To encourage effective knowledge-sharing, establish spaces where all of your employees can offer up their insights and experiences, ask questions, and learn from each other. Setting up chats, forums, or other forms of ‘insight banks’ will give your employees an accessible and easy-to-use platform to share what they’ve learned and create a treasure trove of information that can also be shared with any new starters to enhance and speed up their onboarding process.
Your goal should be to create an inclusive learning environment. So, make sure you work to remove any barriers that your employees may be facing to not only improve their own skill sets, but also learn from and share with others.
And it’s not all about hard tech skills. Soft skills like effective communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management are just as critical in a fast-moving tech landscape.
With this in mind, think about also providing training for managers on identifying and mitigating any unconscious bias they may have, especially crucial when working in a hybrid working environment where ‘proximity bias’ can often come into play. This type of training will ensure that opportunities for upskilling are distributed fairly across diverse teams.
Equally, don’t underestimate the huge impact that representation has on inclusive learning. Showcase the upskilling success stories of learners from diverse backgrounds and highlight how all employees can benefit from your upskilling initiatives.
Step 3: Invest in mentorship schemes
No matter how technical the skills you want your team to gain are, upskilling itself is a very human effort. Learning and development programs are much more likely to succeed if your employees can seek advice from a friendly face, connecting 1:1 in order to stay inspired and motivated.
Implementing mentorship programs that connect your employees with mentors who can guide them through the training process is a fantastic way to bolster your upskilling programs and ensure your employees complete them more successfully. This is especially important for diverse learners and those from underrepresented groups, whose experience of upskilling may differ from that of their peers.
In Daisy’s experience, mentorship schemes are not just about offering guidance to learners.
Mentorship can also help senior members of the team learn new things and create more effective upskilling strategies in the future. Be sure to foster an inclusive, interactive environment where mentorship is a two-way street, benefiting both mentors and mentees.
Offer training for line managers that’s specifically focused on mentorship, covering the principles, benefits, and best practices of mentoring. This training should include modules on effective communication, goal setting, and feedback gathering to ensure mentors can guide their mentees successfully on their upskilling journeys.
Step 4: Build upskilling into your retention strategy
Upskilling doesn’t just ensure that your employees can develop new skills—it also helps you keep them. According to research, 94% of employees say they’d stay with a company longer if the organization prioritized staff development through career coaching, training, and education opportunities.
By offering continuous learning initiatives, you’re showing your people that you’re committed to their professional growth and development. They feel invested in, valued, and like they have a long-term future at your company.
Employees who feel encouraged and supported to develop within their role tend to have higher job satisfaction, which means higher productivity, and longer tenure. Part of that enhanced productivity comes from the fact that employees typically collaborate and perform better when they’re exposed to new technologies, methodologies, and approaches to work. Simply put, employees who are encouraged to learn are often inspired to find better ways of doing things.
As well as helping you keep the best talent under your roof, a dedication to continuous learning also puts you ahead of your competition in attracting new talent. It showcases your organization as an employer of choice for ambitious professionals from all walks of life who are looking for opportunities to grow.
Find out more about the impact of upskilling on talent attraction and retention in this recent article.
Step 5: Celebrate wins, no matter how big or small
Maintaining a culture of continuous learning requires you to bake upskilling into every part of your organization’s operations. Too many businesses relegate learning and development to an hour a week of self-directed studying. While this is a great start, for it to truly take hold, the impact of ongoing learning needs to be present everywhere. The more you recognize your employees’ upskilling efforts, the more motivated they’ll be to continue them.
Here are just some ways to achieve this:
- Let your employees know what a positive impact upskilling is having across your business
- Celebrate their successes and achievements
- Shine a light on cases where upskilled employees have solved problems or contributed to the creation of innovative solutions
- Shout out upskilling wins and the wider impact made by all employees
However you deliver them, your high-fives should be equally and equitably distributed among all learners, no matter what their role, background, or skill level is. This will help create an environment where all employees feel their upskilling efforts are more than just a box-ticking exercise and are truly valued by your business.
Strive to always promote an environment where employees feel their contributions are valued, regardless of their demographic characteristics.
Bonus step: Measure, analyze, and refine
We’ve called this a bonus step, since it can often fall by the wayside when implementing upskilling initiatives in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day responsibilities.
However, it’s crucial to note that fostering a long-lasting, effective upskilling strategy isn’t just about applauding progress, but also about evaluating success and making changes wherever necessary. That could mean changing learning formats or updating the skill sets being taught according to your changing business needs.
To track the performance of your upskilling initiatives and ensure your efforts are delivering maximum ROI, establish feedback mechanisms that allow you to measure the impact of upskilling on factors like productivity, skills gaps, and employee satisfaction.
Seek feedback from learners across your business on a regular, consistent basis, so that necessary changes are implemented quickly, and your employees are continually developing the skills your business needs to thrive.
One size never fits all. Which is why it's crucial that you actively seek input from your employees, especially those from underrepresented groups, to ensure their needs are being met.
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Ready to take your upskilling programs to the next level this year?
