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Upskilling Program
Done Right! 

Connect with an account specialist today to review examples of successful upskilling programs in a live session or learn methodology and insights.
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Workplace Leadership Development Insights

LocalMasters offers a platform as well as strategic insights for your success. Connect with us today for a free personal consultation or if you are interested in implementing leadership development into your workplace. If you need more information first, below are some frequently asked questions about leadership development so you have a better understanding of what it is and how it can benefit your work environment.

Fundamentals

Objectives

Implementation

Tracking

Management

Reference

Methodology
For Success

Step 1

Defining an Upskilling Platform

Step 2

Importance of an Upskilling Platform

Step 3

Implementing an Upskilling Platform

Step 4

Measuring an Upskilling Platform

Step 5

Efforts for Sustaining an Upskilling Platform

Fundamentals

Fundamentals

What is Upskilling?

Businesses in all industries need to train and develop their employees. Opportunities need to be filled, and gaps in skills need to be minimized. Upskilling refers to the process of equipping people with new skills. Skills vary from soft skills to digital skills to technical skills. Upskilling is vital to every type of organization. It helps keep pace with competition and prepares businesses to surpass it. It also enhances employee productivity and heightens readiness for adaptation to changing trends and technologies. Organizations who have an upskilling platform in place develop and promote from within, offering career advancement and upward mobility to their employees which causes top talent to stay with the company.

What is an Upskilling Platform?

An upskilling platform is an online, virtual one-stop shop providing organizations with an amazing array of tools for employee growth, development and training. Organizations are discovering that the accessibility, mobility, flexibility, expandable content capabilities, ROI, cost savings and content delivery at scale that an upskilling platform provides makes the decision to transition to it an easy one.

Objectives

Objectives

Why Focus on an Upskilling Platform?

The pace at which technology continues to transform the business landscape is not slowing down. Organizations must adapt and adjust their operations in order to stay competitive and successful. An upskilling platform provides JIT (just-in-time) solutions that meet today’s ever changing business environments.

Meet Expectations?

New job requirements are created all the time that need specialized skills. Existing workers need to be cross-trained or learn new skills to keep up with demand. Organizations need to retain their talent and keep employees feeling valued and respected. Offering the workforce access to an upskilling platform meets and exceeds expectations of current and future demands.

Close Skill Gaps?

Industries rapidly evolve, trends seemingly change overnight. To keep up and avoid falling behind, employees need to learn new skills. Traditional methods of in person learning cannot meet the pace of change. An upskilling platform provides an opportunity to close skill gaps identified in an organization quickly. Content can be available in a very short timeframe, versus months and months to roll out in a traditional training environment.

Pitfalls to avoid?

Before investing in an upskilling platform, it’s helpful to identify where some employers may struggle. Let’s take a look at some of the most common issues that both companies and their employees may experience when implementing an upskilling platform. 

 

  • Delivery Method is Outdated – Traditional means of upskilling employees through in person training and development, led by an instructor that requires specific attendance dates and times is proving to be more and more challenging as the business landscape evolves. Here are just some examples with traditional in person upskilling:
    • Scheduling all employees to attend
    • Tracking attendance to match who signed up
    • Promoting the training sessions
    • Pulling employees away from their work in order to attend
    • Finding a venue to hold the training
    • Cost of training materials
    • Need for multiple training sessions to reach the number of employees
    • Need to provide multiple times to meet different shifts day – night – overnight

 

  • Traditional Trainings are One-Off Events – in order for upskilling to reach its desired objectives, it should be a continual process. Traditional upskilling training sessions usually aren’t continual, and instead are one time events that employees attend. Information will not stick, and benefits are short term and short lived. To have an impact, upskilling needs to be continuous. When employees have access to an upskilling platform, they have access to continual learning. 

 

  • Expense. Traditional learning and development costs can be extremely pricey. Learning and development managers and trainers need to be compensated, as well as the cost for generating training and upskilling materials for each employee. Training venues and removing employees from their work in order to attend training compounds costs as well. Upskilling platforms are online and virtual, which drastically reduces cost while improving efficiency. Online upskilling platforms are less expensive and save employees time, while reducing traditional training costs for employers.

Implementation

Implementation

Examples of Upskilling Platform Techniques?

Organizations need to target specific skill gaps that their employees need. Once identified, they can cater their upskilling platform to meet their training and development expectations in real time. 

 

  • Skill Specific Upskilling – Which employees need what type of skills? To have the greatest impact, are your employees certified in key skill areas? When employees gain credentials by earning badges and certifications, they are targeting key areas of development. Instead of a training session on a broad soft skill, upskilling platforms allow you to drill deeper into key aspects of skills – making training even more impactful. Some job-specific skills are unique to certain roles in organizations, which can be overlooked by traditional training programs. 

 

  • Individual Development Plans – while personal development plans aren’t an innovative aspect of growth and development, they remain a great asset. Incorporating developmental plans into your upskilling platform empowers your employees autonomy on where they need to grow. The best learning stems from self awareness.

Benefits of an Upskilling Platform?

  • Virtual Courses – gone are the days of in person learning that takes place for hours upon hours in a classroom. Employees have the freedom and flexibility to access training content where they want, when they want. They can start and stop at any time, and pick right up where they left off. Watch employee satisfaction scores rise when employees learn they no longer have to attend inconvenient in-house training! 

 

  • Access to Coaches and Mentors – with virtual coaching and mentoring programs built into the platform, employers can now offer these wonderful growth and development resources at scale. Ease of scheduling and access will allow coaching and mentoring to be accessed to more of the workforce than ever before. Opportunities for leadership to coach and mentor their employees is also an added advantage. 

 

  • Micro-Content Learning – in addition to ease of access an upskilling platform offers bite-sized content in small easy to digest chunks. Perfectly suited to meet the needs of today’s employees. This allows employees added flexibility of fitting in short bursts of knowledge and learning when they have the opportunity. 

 

  • Engaged Employees – when workers are presented with opportunities to grow and develop, they feel valued, respected and important. Job seekers are attracted to organizations that invest in their staff. Keep your talent, keep them happy, address their needs.  An upskilling platform is a terrific avenue to address the requirements of employee engagement. 

 

  • Productive Employees – now that your employees are more engaged, their productivity will rise as well. Productivity suffers when the workforce isn’t trained properly, or given the opportunity to develop. An upskilling platform checks the boxes for productivity gains as well. 

 

  • Retain Your People – we’ve touched on employee retention already, but this important benefit cannot be understated. When companies demonstrate that they are invested in the growth of their workforce, existing workers and potential new workers take notice. Employees want to work for and want to stay with companies that understand and appreciate their value. 

 

  • Improve Customer Satisfaction – engaged and happy workers will naturally enhance the customer experience. Adding an upskilling platform allows your employees to develop their problem solving skills, which customers will appreciate, not to mention improve revenue as well.

Tracking

Tracking

How Do You Know an Upskilling Platform is Working?

One of the many benefits of implementing a digital upskilling platform is that it’s software based, which means data and metrics are easily tracked, measured and made available to you in an easy to use interface.

Common Upskilling Tracking Examples?

Here are just some of the numerous examples of metrics and data an upskilling platform can provide:

 

  • Participation Tracking and Demographics – Upskilling platforms are great at providing diverse metrics of your users, including but not limited to how many learners are using the platform, diversity of the group, age, gender, experience level and job role.

 

  • Completion – Easily monitor who completes courses, when, and how quickly. This helps content curation and measures the efficiency of learning taking place. It also gives you a nice overview of the engagement level of the platform. 

 

  • Comparison stats – Divide groups into new hires, track specific individuals identified for promotion and other groups in order to measure learning against actual outcomes. 

 

  • User Satisfaction – Discovering if users are satisfied with the platform experience is essential for adjusting and making changes in order to maximize its potential. Built in feedback systems make user submitted comments and suggestions a breeze, so admins and leadership can be informed in real time. 

 

  • Technology Adoption – Technology in learning and development continues to evolve to meet the needs of the pace of modern business. The ability to adopt new technologies and integrate them into an upskilling platform serves as a great evaluation tool for its success.

Management

Management

Identify Key Skill Areas?

A great place to start when considering an upskilling platform is to consider what soft skills or competencies your organization needs currently, and which ones you will need later?  This can be quite challenging. If research isn’t conducted companies risk investing in skill areas that don’t match current objectives and company outcomes. This research leads to proper identification of skill gaps, where specific upskilling content can be assigned to maximize the development needs of your organization. Before investing in an upskilling platform, leadership should understand which employees need upskilling.

Is the Workforce Aware?

Another driver of successful upskilling platforms is bringing on new hires who are open to the process of improving, and promoting the platform internally to current employees.  Companies that find out during the interview process if candidates are open to upskilling will have more success with their platform. Generating excitement and visibility to your upskilling program is an important step to gain the buy-in from your workforce. Be sure to frame your messaging with all of the fantastic benefits your platform provides for them.

Cost Effective?

Companies that spend resources on technology will also need to invest in upskilling their workforce. New technology requires new skills and training employees in order to utilize it and incorporate it into the business. Currently it costs upwards of twenty thousand dollars on average to upskill an employee. Upskilling platforms provide a cost effective approach that can reach all of your employees at scale using it’s online software tools. It should be noted that upskilling an employee still costs considerably less than hiring new employees.

Will Employees Stay?

A trend that companies are concerned about regarding upskilling their employees is the apprehension that they will leave. The idea here is that the considerable investment needed to upskill their workforce won’t pay off, because of the fear that employees will leave after receiving their training. While this concern is valid, there are usually other factors that contribute to poor retention. If you provide your employees with opportunities for growth, they will want to stay. Employees will feel valued and more loyal if you invest in them. An upskilling platform provides them reasons to stay rather than leaving.

Reference

Reference

Upskilling Platform Trends Gaining Attention in 2022

The world has gone through a major change in the past two years. From the COVID-19 pandemic, to global lockdown, remote working, economic recession, all these factors will continue to have a current and future impact on business. Here’s where upskilling platforms are heading in 2022 and the coming years. 

Here are a few trends that companies should pay attention to while rethinking, updating, and developing their upskilling platform initiatives. 

  1. Preparing for the Future – technology will not be slowing down anytime soon. Roles and responsibilities will be more fluid than ever before, and companies who want to be in a position to succeed are looking to upskilling platforms to help them prepare and adapt for what’s to come. Businesses can look to the future with confidence, instead of fear. 
  2. Skill Transfer – Cross training is not a new concept, but in the coming years organizations will need a workforce that have skills that are interchangeable. Company cultures will be transitioning toward role flexibility to help growth, diversity and a more inclusive atmosphere. 
  3. Automation Support – increased automation is coming soon, but upskilling can play a key role in supporting the automation process. As tech advances it may decrease roles in certain areas, however it will create new roles too. Companies that have upskilling platforms in place will be able to seamlessly integrate training for new roles as they continue to evolve with the advancements in technology. 

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