How to Upskill Your Employees

Whether the employees on your team have been there for one day or one year, you need to work on upskilling your employees. Upskilling is teaching valuable skills to your team so that everyone can be more successful in the ever-changing work landscape. With constant updates to technology, new systems, and a new world growing around us, it’s important that we grow with it.

There are many benefits to upskilling your employees. For example, it allows promotion from within, which is always beneficial. When you upskill employees, you are preparing your workers for more responsibility and valuable skills to use later in their careers. Where better to further their career than in a higher position! You know what skills they now possess and you can train them specifically for certain positions.

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Assess Current Skills

The first step to upskill your employees is to assess their current skill sets. What skills do they possess and how can you use them to your advantage? You can enhance their already great skills by allowing further education and training. Instead of learning completely new skills, you are helping your employees by setting them up for success in a way that

Invest in Training

There are different types of training programs that can be very beneficial to your company. With online training, big conferences, and experts traveling to your office, there is no excuse to slack on training. While there may be costs, it will help you and your workplace work more effectively, and will likely just lead to more profits. Plus, instead of putting time and money into hiring new people, you can use that money here and promote from within.

Your employers will have to take a bit of a break from their work in order to take part in this training, but their next work will be even more powerful. Plus, this break can even be just a few minutes! Training sessions can be five minutes long but every day, or they can be longer over a shorter course of time. See what works best for your team, their productivity, and the skills you’re trying to enhance.

This training can be something everyone takes part in, a small group of employees, or even just one or two. After having assessed your workers and their skills, everyone might need some extra training, or only a handful! That’s up to you to decide.

Encourage Self-Taught Upskilling

In your employees’ downtime, encourage them to research or upskill on their own. If you bring it up to them, they might be incredibly interested in strengthening their skills and eager to do so. If they find a seminar that is during work hours, allow them to go! Keep an eye on them so you know they truly are upskilling, and even reward the employee for learning on their own. This will encourage other employees to do the same. They can share training opportunities amongst themselves that you might not have seen or heard of. Multiple heads working together can be powerful, never forget that!

Mentorships

One incredibly helpful way to upskill your employees is to set up a mentorship program. Pair up an employee to upskill with one in an already higher role so that the former can learn from the latter. These mentorships allow the employees to ask direct questions, shadow, and learn by example. There are multiple different learning styles in the world, but mentorship can be beneficial to all. They can be auditory, visual, reading via email, and more.

Many employees love mentorships and they hold them in high value. Not only does it help upskill employees, but it also increases camaraderie in the office. This is a skill or trait that employers often miss when upskilling employees. You are a team in the office, so having someone you can rely on that helps you will only strengthen that feeling. Plus, to your higher-level employees, it does not add new work to their already hefty workload. It may add meetings, but it is about the work they already know and love.

Emphasize Upskilling in Work Culture

The last couple of reasons help contribute to this, but it is important that you emphasize upskilling to all your employees. They should know how important it is and that they have the opportunity to be someone else’s mentor in the future! When you show your team how important and valuable this is, everything will just fall into place. They will happily go to training, speak with their mentor, and learn on their own.

Do not forget, this is not just for your own good. This is to help your employees as well! Are there possibilities of raises? Promotions from within? Tell them upskilling will help them reach that next big goal and they will be more successful the more they work.