Your organization puts a lot of effort into hiring and recruiting highly skilled individuals. While it’s important to hire talented workers, it’s equally important that businesses continue to invest time in upskilling and improving the abilities of their current team.
Over the years, we have seen a shift in what matters most to those joining the workforce. Millennial employees want to work for companies that offer the latest and greatest benefits with an exciting company culture. More importantly, this new workforce is looking for companies that invest in their personal training and development. This means that millennials are likely to turn down job offers from companies that don’t offer opportunities for their professional growth. This is why upskilling has become an essential part of every business.
What Is Upskilling?
Upskilling is the process of gaining the new skills and relevant competencies needed to succeed in today’s competitive job market. It’s something you can offer your employees by investing in their continued training and development. Traditionally, employees would receive their training at the start of their new role. After that, they typically would receive little to no training throughout the rest of their time with the employer. Today, with technology and software constantly changing, there is always something new for employees to learn. You can upskill your employees by providing additional training, seminars, webinars, activities, and boot camps. In doing so, you’re enabling them to gain knowledge and continue their professional development.
Why is Upskilling Important?
Upskilling is vital in ensuring that your company can keep up with your industry’s rapidly shifting pace. Many companies are noticing a growing skill gap in their workforce. Young employees just coming out of university are equipped with an expansive knowledge of the new digital world. Their minds are fresh with knowledge, and they’re eager to get to work. Tenured team members are focused on the job at hand and can easily fall behind on their skills if they aren’t being challenged. This puts companies in a difficult position because their senior employees do not have the same ability to innovate. There’s also a risk of young employees churning out if they don’t feel like they’re in an environment where they can continue to grow.
How It Can Help Your Business
As a leader, upskilling your team members can give them a sense of job security by making them feel like they’re a valued part of your company. While this creates happy employees, rest assured that there are benefits to the business too.
Here are some of the benefits you can experience by providing upskilling opportunities to your employees.
Improve Selling and Customer Service
The first step to improving your customer satisfaction is by having a happy team to serve them. By empowering your customer-facing employees with knowledge and expertise, you give them more confidence when working with your clients. A confident salesperson or customer service agent will have an easier time earning the customer’s trust. By improving their ability to sell and advise, you increase customer loyalty and reduce your churn rate.
Increase Efficiency
Your team must have a deep understanding of all the tools and resources at their disposal. You’ve invested thousands of dollars in CRM software and time management tools, but they’re not going to help your employees if they don’t know how to use them properly. Internal and third-party tools constantly push out updates that can get confusing or even get missed entirely by your employees if they don’t receive the proper documentation. Creating training sessions and quick video tutorials will help keep your employees up to date on using their digital tools. It also ensures that they aren’t left behind and unable to use the tools properly. Not understanding how to use a particular software can discourage an employee. Feelings of doubt can cause frustration which leads to an inevitable decrease in job performance.
Improve Employee Retention
Employee satisfaction has less to do with salary than it used to. With the rise of trendy start-up companies, young employees are more intrigued by exciting company culture, great perks, and continuing their education. A well-paid employee is more likely to leave their high salary if they feel that another company can offer them more value. For a millennial to stay with a company, they need to feel like you’re investing in their career progression. In doing so, you’re reassuring them that they’re a vital asset to your business and you’re invested in their growth. They are constantly looking for ways to get more knowledge and skills under their belt. If they think they’ve hit a ceiling at their current company, they’re going to start looking elsewhere.
By offering upskilling opportunities, you challenge your employees and make their days more enjoyable. They leave feeling accomplished at the end of the day because they worked hard to earn their salary and left with more knowledge than the day before. A bored employee is an unhappy employee. A study done by Udemy showed that 43% of U.S employees are bored, making them twice as likely to leave. By furthering their education, you keep them stimulated, which encourages innovation in your business. If they do the same tasks daily, they aren’t motivated, and it’s unlikely you’ll get their creative juices flowing.
It’s Cost-Effective
Providing training opportunities to your employees does cost money, but it’s nothing compared to the high price of replacing an employee. Recruiting takes a tremendous amount of money, time, and resources from multiple people in your company. To take an employee from the hiring stage to the point where they become an effective contributor to your team is no small feat. The costs incurred when onboarding a new team member will often be higher than upskilling your current workers. Having a revolving door of employees can take a toll on the morale of your existing staff. By investing in employee retention, you can enjoy savings from your recruiting and onboarding efforts.
Promote From Within
It can be challenging to find the right culture fit when hiring for new or senior roles in your company. Many employees prefer to be lead by someone whose familiar with the business instead of reporting to a stranger that’s never been in their seat before. Upskilling your employees and enabling them to earn senior and managerial level positions can save you hiring money and promotes a healthy work environment. One of the most comment questions in the interview process relates to growth and promotion opportunities. What does the career path look like for the role they’re applying to. Hiring someone with all the credentials to fit the position can feel like the right option, but it will still take the time to learn your company culture and be welcome by your team.
Attract The Best Talent
Review sites like Glassdoor have made it so prospective employees can find out everything they need to know about working for your company before they even apply. A poor review of your company can deter someone from accepting a role or even applying at all. Upskilling is something employees want to rave about, and it’s often a highlight in Glassdoor reviews. Favorable ratings of your company will attract talent that values the education you offer. This means they’re passionate about learning and eager to find a business they can grow with.
Why eLearning Is The Best Option for Upskilling?
Upskilling doesn’t have to be disruptive. Using eLearning enables employees to learn at their own pace. Online tools allow them to refer back to the content at any time without having to keep piles of notebooks at their desk.
Here are some of the best perks of eLearning:
- It’s customizable for your business needs.
- You can access the content anywhere and anytime.
- There’s no need to hire instructors and disrupt your entire workforce.
- The training and lectures can be viewed any number of times.
- These modern forms of learning can be updated to remain relevant, so you’re not providing outdated information.
- They offer scalable plans for growing businesses.
- See cost reductions as travel and instructors aren’t required.
- The content is easier to grasp and easily digestible with the ability to pause and review.
How SkildLabs Can Help with Upskilling?
SkildLabs recognized a need for a more tailored upskilling experience. Not every company has the same pain points and skillsets, which is why we tailor the learning experience to you and your team. We work with you to determine your desired outcomes to develop an exciting curriculum that meets your business needs. Education should be entertaining and interactive, so we strive to create training programs that are engaging for your employees. We’re there to support you through the production of your video training, and we’ll ensure that we use the best platform for your content, so it integrates seamlessly with your company workflow. SkildLabs takes your learning objectives and brings them to life. Our promise to you is that we’ll be there every step of the way. Connect with us HERE.