Career Mobility: Upskilling & Reskilling

According to this CNBC blog , 54% of job seekers overlook openings at their company. Nearly half, 43%, say they don’t have enough opportunities for internal mobility based upon the 2021 Randstad RiseSmart’s Career Mobility Report.?Carolyn Kleiman, a career expert at ResumeBuilder.com, says that when an employee feels frustrated with their role or employment situation, their first instinct is to look for a new job elsewhere.

This is why Lever, an applicant tracking software provider, states in this blog that:?

Prioritizing career mobility is your company’s best means to both attract and retain top talent and realize your desired business growth.

Which companies are leaders in career mobility??According to this Burning Glass study, AT&T, American Express, Cisco PG&E, and LinkedIn parent Microsoft have the highest scores for employee mobility.

In this issue of the Career Mobility Newsletter, we will explore Upskilling and Reskilling programs which is the sixth element of my Career Mobility model below:

What is Upskilling and Reskilling?

According to this LinkedIn blog :

When an employee undertakes learning to expand their existing skill set, that learning is known as upskilling. These additional skills enhance the worker’s performance in their current role, potentially advancing their career path.

Employee reskilling involves learning new skills outside of the worker’s existing skillset. These skills are often closely adjacent to their current function, but may sometimes be geared toward a different path entirely.

While the processes are similar, they differ in the skills learned and the end result.?

Why is Upskilling & Reskilling Essential in 2023?

John Hall, senior contributor to this Forbes newsletter , explains it this way.?As market demand changes, in-demand skills will also evolve.?Some jobs may no longer exist, others will look different, and some roles haven’t been dreamed up yet.?Leaders have two highly effective talent development tools to address this scenario:?upskilling and reskilling.?For example, AI may eliminate receptionist jobs in a few years, but HR could identify these employees and offer to reskill them for various customer service specialist roles.

This Lever blog referenced their 2022 Great Resignation report findings indicating that businesses with upskilling and reskilling programs saw 61% of their employees participate in these programs to improve their existing roles.?Another 23% took skill-based courses to move into new positions. In the new world of work, organizations must attract new talent but also retain existing employees.?Upskilling and reskilling can achieve both goals.

One of the main reasons people leave organizations is lack of career development … so you’re losing talent when you only see people through the lens of the job they’re hired into, said Forrester Principal Analyst Katy Tynan

What are the Causes of Growth in Skill Gaps?

AIHR’s blog , identifies the two leading causes of the growing skills gap many companies are facing:

• An aging workforce driving retirement and leaving open positions that are hard to fill with the loss of skills and knowledge.
• Developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and other digital technologies are changing the nature of jobs and the skills needed to do them.

How are Reskilling and Upskilling Helping Companies Prepare for the Future?

Another Forbes newsletter written by Eric Friedman cited a study in which 71% of CEOs said their most significant business challenge in 2023 would be an acute talent shortage.?The U.S. Department of Labor has allocated an additional $100 million to its Dislocated Worker Grant program to provide training opportunities and temporary employment.?During the last few years, the number of organizations investing in upskilling and reskilling programs to build a future-ready workforce increased by 15%.

Here are some ways upskilling and reskilling help companies prepare for the future:

1. Beat the talent shortage – there is a labor shortage in almost every industry confirmed by the fact that 83% of HR professionals surveyed said they have difficulty finding qualified candidates for critical job roles, and 75% said most applicants lack the required job skills.
2. Avoid future workforce disruptions – if organizations want to remain competitive, they must invest in their biggest asset:?their employees so workers acquire more marketable skills and companies create a talent pool that can adapt to market changes.
3. Create a viable talent pool – although technological advances will replace some jobs, they will also create new opportunities, so it is in the best interest of organizations to upskill employees to perform their current job or transition to a new role.
4. Attract top talent – high-quality candidates want to work for an employer that is committed to developing them so businesses that want to attract them must implement an upskilling and reskilling plan.

These are some companies that have implemented upskilling and reskilling programs:

• Verizon launched a $44 million upskilling program to help candidates train for in-demand jobs such as junior cloud practitioner, IT help desk technician and digital marketing analyst.
• Bank of America partnered with high schools and community colleges and invested $1 billion to upskill and reskill thousands of students for in-demand jobs.
• Accenture made a billion-dollar annual commitment to upskill and reskill all its employees.

Who is Responsible for Upskilling and Reskilling?

According to this Lever blog , upskilling and reskilling employees to provide workers with internal mobility paths is not just a task solely for people managers, it is a shared duty among team leaders and human resources.

How to Upskill and Reskill Employees?

AIHR’s blog also referenced seven ways to upskill your workforce depending on your organization's needs as identified by a skills gap analysis.?See my previous newsletter on how to conduct a skills audit .?Often, a combination of different upskilling techniques will be most effective.??

Learning and development – an L&D program based upon a strategy is probably the most obvious direction.?Depending upon the strategic model utilized, there are usually four phases required:

• An analysis of training needs (for instance through a skills gap analysis)
• Specification of learning objectives
• Design of training content and method
• Monitoring and evaluation

Since every organization will end up with a different L&D strategy and program, this means that learning methods will vary as well.?Examples include online courses, real-life lectures and seminars, peer coaching, and an upskill track on their Learning Management System.

Job Rotation – a key technique in job redesign is the practice of moving employees between jobs in an organization.?These rotations are mostly lateral because they take place between roles at the same level.?It can be an excellent way to transfer specific skills, knowledge, and competencies, although people tend to move back to their original job after a specified period.

One example is HR professionals who lack business skills.?Rotating them out of the HR department into a business position is a good way to build these capabilities.

Job Enlargement – involves including additional activities in an existing role within the same level.?This upskilling method teaches a variety of skills to help employees with their career growth.?The additional job responsibilities often require training and building additional experience.

Job Enrichment – is characterized by adding extra dimensions to existing jobs. The main goal is to make jobs more motivating, but it can also upskill employees at the same time.?Examples include increasing skill variety, creating more autonomy, and giving feedback.

Peer Coaching – involves two or more colleagues working together to expand, refine, and build new skills as well as teach one another and solve problems in the workplace.?If you pair a marketeer with a content creator, this will create mutual opportunities to build new skills and increase each other’s basic knowledge in their areas of expertise.?It is a great way to build the soft skills of employees.

Peer Mentoring – in contrast to peer coaching, this upskilling method pairs a more experienced employee with a less experienced worker to teach them knowledge and skills as well as provide guidance.?This type of knowledge comes from employees’ personal experiences and interactions with colleagues and is hard to transfer outside of mentoring.

Hire External Experts/Specialists (Outsourcing) – you may need to upskill employees, but you don’t have the capacity to do so, or you don’t have the knowledge and experience with the new skills to upskill them.?An example is digital and technical skills like programming and application development. In this case, an alternative might be to hire freelance specialists or contractors who can bring the exact skills, competencies, and experience you need to get started.?This may also be an upskilling opportunity to team these external experts with employees to transfer the knowledge or buy time to create an L&D strategy.

This HBR article written by Susan R. Vroman and Tiffany Danko explores the right way for organizational and human resources leaders to identify and implement upskilling for their workforce:

Empower Your Employees to Own Their Career Development – one of the most strategic moves a company can make is to hire employees who do not fit just one job but can shift when the business changes.??Often these employees know how to grow within the company, they just need tools to get there.

At Cengage Group, with more than 4,000 global employees,?

“Careers are employee owned, manager supported, company enabled.” Patrice Low, VP of Human Resources

Her team, frontline managers, and organizational leaders collaborate to connect employees' interests, operational goals, and organizational gaps to determine which L&D solution to pursue.?Managers are trained to conduct meaningful one-on-one meetings with their direct reports every week where employees discuss interests and goals and advocate to gain managerial support (introductions, stretch projects, etc.)?If on-the-job opportunities are not available, employees can enroll in formal HR upskilling programs.?

Another example is John Hancock Insurance Company which offers an online self-service learning center called “Pursuit Learning Hub”, with various courses for personal and professional development.?Managers may suggest their employees pursue topics based on organizational goals or anticipated activities, but employees are empowered to make the final selection.?Employees are given one afternoon of paid time off each month to participate and in October 2021, they collectively spent 12,000 hours developing their skillsets.

Show Where Ideas Go – If you ask employees for input on upskilling efforts, it's important for them to see how you use their ideas.?Company leaders should identify the repetitive themes in feedback and surveys, consolidate that data, and integrate it into decisions regarding how to offer upskilling options that may support operational and talent development goals.

One example is Medicus, a $200 million company with 215 employees, where turnover is detrimental to its operations. Facing an uptick in attrition in a job category, the L&D team obtained feedback on why employees were leaving.?They collaborated to identify barriers and opportunities to improve the upskilling experience at critical moments in the employee lifecycle.?The outcome was a layered four-week program improved retention by 50%.

When gaps in upskilling programs are identified at Cengage Group, they are communicated to HR business partners who raise the issues to HR and operations leadership.?Decisions on what to add to upskilling offerings are made and communicated to the organization.

Combining individual goals with organizational L&D strategy has the potential for strong returns.?Results from Cengage Group's bi-annual survey show that turnover remains low and employee engagement scores are higher than in the past.

Provide a Roadmap – often employees are frustrated about attending upskilling programs without an end in sight, especially if there are limited options for promotional roles.?It is important to identify clear paths and milestones for performance measurement in any upskilling program.

At Medicus, employees can evaluate their own performance against company measures using a Red, Yellow, and Green, metric. They both self-evaluate and utilize managers and learning specialists to review demonstrated progress and performance. This enables employees to take ownership while receiving feedback to calibrate their actual performance against company expectations.

By knowing what’s expected for career progression and providing clear metrics for individual evaluation, employees have a framework within which to work. Erin Posnick, Team Lead Corporate Training and Development

This also gives companies an evaluation framework for their upskilling program, including training and development metrics, retention, advancement, etc. as part of the organization’s long-term strategy.

The Future of Work and Upskilling Integration

The future of work is now, and upskilling is a key tool for retaining and developing employees for organizational growth and strategic positioning.?It sometimes can be challenging to identify the skills and competencies for future performance that employees will deem valuable enough to stay with your organization.

As your organization considers opportunities to upskill your employees, empowerment, engagement, and planning are critical. Listening to your employees' needs and wants, then acting on them, will position you for future success. Susan R. Vroman and Tiffany Danko

Make Sure Your Company’s Reskilling Efforts Pay Off

This hbr.org article by Anand Chopra-McGowan highlights the need to use harder metrics to measure the impact of upskilling programs.?According to the article, LinkedIn found that the majority of measures used to assess the impact of training programs were soft, like completion rates, satisfaction scores, and employee feedback.

Anand identifies four types of metrics from successful programs that combined will create a comprehensive scorecard to measure the return on investment of skill-building programs:

Cost Metrics – compare the cost of reskilling vs. not doing so.?First add up the total cost of the reskilling initiatives including direct training costs, employee’s time off work, and any administrative costs.?Then add up the cost of not reskilling like recruiting and onboarding expenses if you would have to hire a new employee.?If you have to lay off an employee because you didn’t reskill them, consider severance and administration costs.

If your reskilling program is associated with digital transformation, this may be the only metric you need.?A General Assembly report found that for expensive roles like software engineer and data scientist, reskilling can pay for itself as much as six times over.

Productivity Metrics – this measures the change in speed or effectiveness with which the skill is developed by the program. For example, a team at a U.S. healthcare insurance company was able to save more than $9 million by applying a tool they built in a data-analysis course.

People Metrics – this measures the stability and satisfaction of the workforce.?There is a positive correlation between the level of investment in developing employees and their propensity to stay with the company.?An IBM study found that new employees are 42% more likely to stay if they are receiving training that helps them do their jobs more effectively.?

Talent attraction and internal mobility are other people metrics that can be incorporated into the scorecard.?A global professional services firm found that by advertising their data science upskilling program on job boards, they saw a 9% increase in applications.?Zurich Insurance Group increased their hiring of positions internally two-fold (from one-third to two-thirds) by upskilling and reskilling existing workers in technology.

Sponsor Satisfaction Metrics – the most effective approach is to ask managers and leaders vs. the program participants whether they think the training was useful for their team members.?Wait for a reasonable time after the training is complete when managers are more likely to see a difference in their team’s work.

A recent McKinsey & Co. survey asked 1,200 executives about the nature and impact of their investment in reskilling across eight different key performance indicators from employee satisfaction and retention to customer experience and brand perception.?This approach could also be used with frontline managers whose teams participated in various reskilling programs.

Creating Your Scorecard

L&D teams should require a definition of success and advise stakeholders on how to measure it before launching any skill-building program.?For example, is the goal to fill new jobs with existing talent? If so, how many??Or is it to improve productivity on a certain task??If so, by how much??Or to improve morale??This clarity is critical to inform every aspect of the program’s design – the curriculum, participant selection, required activities, and metrics.

Scorecards can also be used to track powerful stories related to your training programs.?Interview participants with a few questions on their background, the reason for enrolling, how they are using their new skills, and what made their experience successful.?As reskilling and upskilling priorities increase, the pressure to justify investments will also rise.

Call to Action

Thank you for taking the time to read this exclusive Career Mobility Newsletter on LinkedIn, initially designed for HR and talent professionals.??

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