Graham Glass is the founder & CEO of CYPHER LEARNING, which specializes in providing learning platforms for organizations around the world.
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Companies and HR professionals today face a digitally transformed workforce, emerging technologies that change and improve workflows and the continued effects of the Great Resignation—among many other opportunities and challenges.
These all underscore the importance of training and professional development opportunities that bridge skills gaps and are tailored to employees’ wants and needs. In this context, “right-skilling” has become more important than ever.
What is right-skilling?
Right-skilling means equipping your workforce with the right skills to do the tasks they’re facing—an area that’s become much more relevant in an ever-evolving business landscape. Although it’s often confused with re-skilling (or re-training employees for different roles, so they can pivot), right-skilling is geared toward keeping employees productive and enabling them to deliver value in their current positions.
And as job duties and how we fulfill them change—particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) is introduced to improve and streamline processes—adaptability and broader skill sets become even more important to driving future-proofed, resilient and successful businesses. In fact, in a recent Deloitte report with insights from 2,260 C-level executives, "flexibility/adaptability" was ranked the most critical workforce trait for an organization’s future.
What are the benefits of right-skilling employees?
Providing opportunities to learn the right skills enables employees to bring more value to the business. Here’s how:
• Increased Productivity: Employees can adopt more effective work processes and optimize their workflows, leading to a rise in productivity.
• Increased Job Satisfaction: Employees are more likely to be happy with their jobs when they see a clear career trajectory ahead of them and are not facing pressures of potential redundancy or a lack of preparedness. Competence also breeds confidence.
• Improved Bottom Line: It costs more to replace employees than keep people on board. Right-skilling training programs are a more cost-effective investment than acquiring and onboarding new talent and can help companies generate better products and services.
With this in mind, here are three best practices to structure right-skilling and professional development at your organization:
1. Identify and close learning gaps.
When it comes to right-skilling, the most important piece of advice for companies is: Don’t wing it! Starting right-skilling from the wrong premise yields subpar results. In other words, teaching some skills just because they sound good won’t get your business anywhere.
Additionally, learning and development (L&D) departments often need to deviate from traditional paths and adopt an opportunity-seeking approach. Anticipating industry changes and making adjustments to training is a must.
Organizations often benefit from identifying learning gaps and using this as a basis for right-skilling. Such questions you might ask yourself are: Where are various employees struggling? What key tasks (and foundational skills for accomplishing them) could use improvement? However, performing a “skills-gap analysis” and recommending the best training for employees can be tedious, especially if your workforce has thousands of employees. Today, tools can expedite this process, so L&D can focus on creating and curating training content.
2. Create continuous learning opportunities.
Getting people on board with new training initiatives can be a challenge; it’s often hard to convince employees to take time out of their busy schedules. That’s why instead of focusing on communicating why right-skilling is good for the company, first try to explain what’s in it for them (e.g., time-saving activities, advancement opportunities, etc.).
Companies can also create continuous learning opportunities that employees want to engage with by providing varied and flexible training and taking steps to incorporate learning into the flow of work. To that end, the L&D department’s focus should be on making training available in a variety of formats—written content, audio, video, social learning opportunities, etc.—so that employees can learn according to their preferences.
In addition, companies can create a more motivating right-skilling environment by keeping training short and to the point and by seeking ways to introduce fun and even friendly competition.
3. Build a more effective training ecosystem.
Right-skilling isn’t about gathering people in a conference room to talk at them—going on and on (death-by-PowerPoint style) and applying a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. Instead, find ways to make learning interactive and meaningful. Even if two employees aim to reach the same skill, they don’t have to take the same standardized training.
Based on learners’ preferences, aptitudes, career goals and more, seek opportunities to easily and automatically create individualized right-skilling journeys. For example, on their paths to acquiring a certain competency, Person A may read the course introduction, listen to a podcast and watch a tutorial, while Person B may be best suited to reading a technical article, taking a short quiz and then sharing what they’ve learned in a discussion forum.
All of this can and should happen while employees are working on new tasks that let them apply their knowledge.
You can’t go wrong with well-planned right-skilling.
Right-skilling can help companies mitigate and even preempt future skill shortages and should be a part of long-term organizational development plans. With the right training environment—emphasizing the right skills and driven by the right goals—companies can also achieve the right outcomes that drive business success.
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