A Seven Step Guide to Effective Workforce Reskilling
Every IT&T organisation can conduct a successful reskilling programme – planning is the key
Making more of the best workers you have can be a faster and better way to support your business. Follow these seven simple steps to revolutionise the way you train your workforce.
Conduct a granular skills inventory to determine the skills your business already has. Some organisations may choose an external evaluator for this task, but if you prefer to conduct your skills audit internally, begin by cross-referencing employee records – review each employee’s current role within your organisation and the roles they may have held with other businesses or in other industries to determine:
What skills they must demonstrate to conduct their present role successfully
What skills they may have learned or been taught in previous roles
Which workers show ‘stand out’ success within their current roles – are they prime candidates for reskilling development?
What are each individual’s skills gaps, how strong is their learnability, what motivations will they need to ensure they can make the leap to the next level?
To operate a skills assessment and to track development potential, conduct a tech audit: Do you have the right HR systems in place? Does your learning management system reflect the skills you wish to develop? Is it utilised or gathering dust? Do employees understand the skills they need develop to progress though career pathing tools or your talent marketplace platform? If your answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, where will you secure the capabilities you require? Is it more effective to employ an external source to handle this need?
Match your organisational plan to a workforce skills plan. To achieve your organisational goals, what skills are you missing now, and more importantly, what skills will you need to deliver the achievements you are aiming for in 5, 10, or 20 years? You may understand what you will sell in the future, but do you know what skills you will need to build those products? During this process, consider the transferability of the skills within your business. What skills do your workers have that would support them in a new role, (for example, would a data analyst’s current skills be more valuable if they were transferred to logistics control?). Determine which skills are characteristics and which have been learned through work experience. How do they fit into your future skills needs? What roles can they help to support?
3: When is it better to Build than Buy?
ManpowerGroup’s 4B’s approach – Build, Buy, Borrow, and Bridge - is a flexible matrix of recruitment strategies. Each path may be used individually, or concurrently with other actions in the groups. Build is the most effective option when skills are rare in the market, and they are core to your strategy and competitive advantage. As buying talent becomes unworkable due to shortages and spiralling compensation expectations, building allows you to create the skills you specifically need in the quantity you need within your strategic timescale. As a bonus, it also adds value and authenticity to your organisation’s EVP.
4: Motivate to graduate
According to McKinsey, 75% of reskilling programmes pay off economically. However, this statistic reflects programmes that have been completed. Many training programs fail because the employees become disaffected and drop out of the course. Motivators – in the form of incentives that reward an employee with greater opportunity, or where the employees are offered promotion but can only achieve this if they pass the training, are essential to ensure participation.
Incentives that are linked to clear pathways and that give access to a more satisfying, better paid, or more responsible role must fit within your organisation’s strategic workforce plan – build towards a predetermined outcome, not towards general employee improvement. For example, you train to create a new pool of data programmers, not to elevate your workers’ general technology proficiency.
5: Managers matter
Managers are the talent scouts within your organisation. They are in the best position to identify and reskill potential talent. However, this is typically where reskilling programmes are at their weakest. IT&T managers are often constrained by lack of time, low belief in their effectiveness, and few tangible incentives to fulfil their roles as incubator. They must be offered suitable incentives, adequately trained or coached to conduct training initiatives and held accountable to do so by way of monitoring and regular one-to-one check-ins with the internal talent team.
Only one in four managers report that their learning and development function was critical to achieving business outcomes.
6: Select your training solution
Deliver the right experience to deliver the right outcome by offering:
Exposure to ensure the job the individual is being trained for is an appropriate fit
Education to give individuals the skills they need to do the job
Experience to be successful within the job
Then consider the best way to implement them and what technology will be required. Any successful strategy will have technology to support it – be it LMS, LinkedIn Learning, talent marketplace, etc. Implementation strategies may include:
Create your own in-house academy.
Employ external resources such as an RPO service provider with a pre-built academy/ training solution.
Graduate programmes - training college graduates with no work experience but high potential to fill skilled roles upon completion of the programme.
Blend your strategy to include selected elements of all of the above.
Successful training programmes are always a work in progress, with room for continuous improvement. Upon completion of each campaign, analyse the results to enhance the next training cycle.
Measure the programme, the trainers and the trainees at a regular cadence throughout the process, so that interventions can take place before the end of the programme. This will enhance your chances of success.
Manage the managers who are running the programmes. Ensure they have the tools and capabilities to successfully develop trainees, correctly onboard them after the programme, and get reskilled workers up to effectiveness.
Optimise the programme to address any problems or shortfall in the planning, delivery and results. Ensure your new outcome expectations will still align with your organisational strategy, values, and EVP.
Scale the programme to account for organisational growth and future skills requirements. Adjust elements and modules as necessary to furnish the essential training to give your workers the skills they will need to fill those varied roles.
