Empowering your workforce with new knowledge, skills, and experiences is one of the most critical things you can do to ensure the success of your business. Upskilling your current team can go a long way in making sure that your business is equipped with knowledgeable employees who have the tools to succeed.
How to Upskill Your Workforce
Here’s what to focus on to better train and educate your employees.
- Understand the talent gap: Where exactly are the knowledge gaps? What do you need to make sure your employees are capable and qualified to order to help your business succeed both now and long into the future? Technology skills, in particular, will become crucial to every area of your business, from finance to marketing to sales and HR. Are your employees and departments ready to learn what it will take to support whatever future work requires?
- Hire those who are hungry to learn: When it comes to ensuring that your workforce is prepared to take on new challenges and participate in employee-offered training is to find the people who love to learn. Whether these are people you identify when you’re first hiring for a role, or current employees that you work with or management helps you find. Upskilling really starts with finding the people who want to keep learning and see growth as an opportunity, as opposed to those that see “development” as a chore or company-issued mandate.
- Strengthen your in-house training: You might not have an in-house trainer, but you can still have effective training for employee development and upskilling. Start small by using YouTube tutorials or SlideShare presentations and begin to formalize small training groups and regular sessions to enhance needed skills.
- Find a training pro: For certain tech skills and training sessions, it makes sense to partner with an outside educational professional who can help develop and lead training classes and programs. There are many professional education and training companies who can help your company tackle tough training tasks, but businesses can also partner with colleges, universities, local technical trade schools, and more in order to bring in some additional resources.
- Consider apprenticeship or mentorship: One of the best ways to grow the skills of your current workforce is to match up employees with another expert in your company. This is particularly helpful for companies to do when they’re working on succession planning and strategy. It’s important that the knowledge and skills that exist within your company don’t get lost when someone moves on or retires. Passing along education and training from person to person can be valuable in both ensuring there are fewer knowledge gaps, as well as improve team collaboration and cross-business relationships.
Are you looking for niche talent to close the gap?
Businesses who are thinking about the future need to focus on their present and figure out what they have and what they need to get where they want to go. If you’re looking for the right talent – from the tech-savvy to those with advanced training skills – give our expert team a call.