What is upskilling and how can you upskill employees?

Posted 2 years ago

Upskilling can be described as the process of learning additional skills.

In today’s climate, it is becoming increasingly relevant and many individuals have found themselves needing to learn new skills in order to remain competitive in the current job market.

On the flip side, upskilling employees has also become increasingly popular amongst employers. With continuous technological advancements, organisations are constantly having to adapt by changing the way they operate, which often requires employees to learn new skills.

So, upskilling employees is mutually beneficial for organisations and individuals alike, but how can organisations upskill their staff?

How can you upskill an employee?

A person can upskill themselves in a variety of different ways, depending on what’s right for them and their career. However, it is often the employer that can best equip an employee with the tools and support to upskill.

Here are our best tips to help upskill employees...

Offer stretch opportunities at work

A great way to develop new skills and competencies is by undertaking a project outside someone's usual remit. Therefore, employers can offer their employees an opportunity to work with people from other teams to help them adopt new skills they might not have previously used before.

Some employees might take action into their own hands and ask for an opportunity of this nature themselves, and it is an employer's duty to seriously consider these requests.

However, there may be employees that don’t have the confidence to request this kind of work. With that said, employers should reach out to line managers to encourage people to come forward if they are interested in picking up on different projects, or developing a new skill.

Ultimately, a stretch project can help employees pick up new skills, work on existing skills, like communication and problem solving, and can also help ease workloads across the board.

Encourage employees to spend time on professional development at work

Many employees are uncomfortable with the thought of spending working hours on their own development, but organisations should actively encourage employees to do so.

Whether employees are keeping up-to-date with industry trends, trying to learn new skills, taking advice from industry experts, or even practicing methods & ways of working, it will ultimately help them improve their professional development and also keep them engaged and motivated.

Employers can support this in a couple of ways.

Firstly, you can provide them with the time to work on their professional development. Obviously, it’s down to you how much time you would like employees to dedicate to this and it is ultimately dependent on how busy your organisation is. However, as a rough guide, an hour a week on personal development will hopefully offer them substantial time to develop.

Additionally, employers can help their staff’s personal development through financial assistance. This could include buying them books/other literature, hiring a tutor, or even putting them through online training courses.

Provide them with online training

Online training has been particularly popular over the last year due to limited face-to-face interaction, and it’s popularity seems to continue to rise. And why wouldn’t it?!

Online training, also known as eLearning, provides the opportunity to work on training at a time that suits the user, also allowing the user to complete it in multiple sessions rather than in one go.

Maybe there are areas that you believe all of your employees could benefit from, or alternatively, there might be areas you want certain departments or even individuals to improve on. Providing that you choose a quality training provider, they should be able to assist you in setting your workforce up on the training that is best for them.

Here at iHASCO, we offer a number of Online Soft Skill Training courses that can be used to help upskill your staff.

These courses cover a number of important topics for working professionals including, but not limited to:

And this library is only set to grow! Keep up to date with our Coming Soon page to see the continuing list of Soft Skills being added to our library.

These courses are the ideal way to help increase staff engagement, motivation, and wellbeing, as well as helping your employees to develop personally and professionally!

Claim a free, no-obligation trial to any of these courses today!