Reskilling programmes require sharp planning, strong experience and a delivered outcome to succeed.
Meeting the talent shortage by reskilling and retraining to build the skills organisations need to meet their long-term strategy is often flawed because of execution problems – most critically, a lack of outcome focus, insufficient planning, and weak change management support.
Many organisations offer internally managed training and reskilling programmes to existing workers, but the results may be sub-optimal due to flawed planning. Development programmes that have an outcome driven focus – where the exercise is created with a clear path to the desired result, for example, creating new systems developers to fill a future hole in the workforce, instead of merely upgrading staff technical skills – have been proven to be most effective at creating interest, participation and positive end results.
Conversely, training and reskilling programmes that lack an outcome focus typically suffer from low management input (belief in success) and a corresponding lack of interest by participants (what’s the point?), which leads to student drop-outs and poor participation – a situation with the potential to generate a reskilling ‘doom loop’ where poor programmes drive low investment by middle management > which invites weak interest by employees > creates low participation by students > and continues to drive poor programmes > repeat and repeat again.
To stay competitive, businesses must deploy training programmes that fit the organisation’s long-term strategic objectives and that will generate the skills they will need to get them there. However, according to PwC, only 20-30% of 4,000 surveyed global businesses agreed that they are taking strong action to achieve these vital goals.
This discovery must be considered alongside a World Economic Forum report from 2022 that estimated 25% of all jobs worldwide have required new skill sets since 2015.
More tellingly, they forecast this number will double to 50% by 2027. Half of all workers will need to learn completely new skill sets in the next five years.
Even though most business leaders know reskilling is an effective way to make employees more productive (up to 12% according to McKinsey), and reskilling and upskilling pays off economically in approximately 75% of all cases, many organisations remain confused as to what reskilling programmes are most effective, how to apply the best teaching methods, and what the end-value of the new skills may be.
Additionally, organisations often struggle to accurately assess the business case for reskilling – unable to ascertain the total time and cost to reach productive effectiveness or compare the true cost/return ratios of competing internal or externally-led training programmes.
