The problem of workforce reskilling, skilling, and upskilling is not new. In fact, it has long been a source of concern for both companies and employees. Today’s dynamics are faster than ever before, and technology is shaping tomorrow’s jobs. So how do we prepare ourselves for the future? is a question that many businesses are asking. In this article we will understand different aspects of employee training and development and at importance of reskilling and upskilling.
Importance of learning and development culture:
Employee training and development is a continuous process that is essential to any organization’s survival. Company cannot afford to stay outdated or understaffed in today’s competitive business environment. As a result, businesses are taking steps to ensure that their employees remain competitive in their fields. The requirements for learning are increasing as and when a company grows and expands. Employee training thus becomes a very crucial component for their career progression and for retention.
How to address employee training and development gaps?
While we are discussing all these aspects of employee skill development, the crucial point is how to address these skill gaps. In today’s scenario it’s difficult to find candidates with proper skills. What will sustain the organisation’s search is how one understands the spread of skills in the market. Every company today requires skill gap analysis both internally as well as externally to survive the war of talent market.
The requirements of competencies of employees are changing with every generation. Therefore, companies and employees are facing difficulties of reskilling and up skilling in today’s work environment. Let’s look at a few simple ways to address gaps of skill development
- Create a development plan for the employee : Employee development plans can help companies identify exactly what the employee needs. To complete employer shall invest in employee skills development and measure their progress from these employee development plans.
- Establishing Learning Culture : Companies may help employees feel comfortable with self-improvement by cultivating a learning culture and an environment that encourages deep learning.
- Trainings for existing employee : Although it is a time-consuming process but it can help to improve most of the skill gap among employees. Keeping up with industry knowledge, training is great way which can influence the upskilling of employees. Mastering the skills one needs for a career progression is key but then you get stuck in a rut, working on the same tasks over and over gets difficult and monotonous.
Benefits of Re-skilling and Up-skilling:
Increased Employee Retention: lack of growth opportunities is a strong reason for which employees leave their roles/jobs. Providing training to gain new skills and career growth within the company can increase engagement and retention.
- Cost Savings: the cost of replacing an employee who leaves a company averages around a third of their annual salary, upskilling can mean significant cost savings for a company.
- A Recruiting Tool: It’s harder to measure a company’s reputation in industry, hence providing growth opportunities can help with recruiting. It’s found from a survey that many employees think job training is important to them.
- A Culture of Learning: most employees want to upskill because supportive work environment with up-skilling advantage can help on boost their morale, teamwork, and satisfaction.
For growth learning and training will always stitch the big picture. What companies should look into are ways to improvise and streamline the learning and development function along with training process. This would not only help them stay relevant but also put them ahead of the game.
The business models are changing rapidly and so are their dependencies on technology. Companies, training consultants and service providers will have to blend ways of training and improvise on methods focusing on flexibility of employee training and development delivering methods.
Depending on the businesses and scenarios you operate in you can choose either of the below. The modes of learning are adaptable basis the need and employee learnability.
Employee Training Modes
- Online learning
- Class room learning.
Even though you have a strong learning culture and you are promoting continuous learning, you must have powerful and customised training programs planned for employees to create a strong workforce for future.
However, if you don’t have well-trained personnel, you may start to have out-dated workforce with lower productivity. Hence importance of employee training essentially becomes mandatory for a future-ready organization in all aspects.
While training and development looks like long-term investment but it pays off only when an organisation attains a certain amount of maturity which we generally refer to learning culture. Organizations must hence prioritize training programs in order to keep their employees updated. Be it about the latest technical/functional enhancements, industry trends, and management expectations.
Benefits of employee training and development:
A well-trained workforce can handle any circumstance that arises on the job. Aptly skilled workforce will not only be better at their jobs but also more efficient. If employees are not properly trained, they are essentially wasting the time, resources, and money of the firm.
Except these, there are a few more advantages of employee training and development. It promotes consistency at workplace and it encourages risk-taking ability for innovation. It enhances the organization’s reputation and results. So every organisation should focus on identifying the skill gap of their employees. This can be effectively done through internal learning and development team or through external service provider. After identifying training needs, employers must put together a proper training program for the workforce.
Employee training and development programs
Skill gap matrix created thus helps learning and development teams to identify which training types can be used to improvise the skills of the employees.
- Orientation and on boarding training: One of the key program which every firm should make a part of culture. This not only helps new joiner to caste an impression about the company but also will ease the new joiner experience. New employees can simultaneously grasp the job role efficiently with right expectation of their contribution towards the organisational goals.
- Soft skills/Behavioural training programs.
- Technical/Product/Service training programs.
- Leadership Development training programs and workshops.
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