Upskilling And Retention: How Helping Your Employees Develop Keeps Them Engaged Longer - Burnett Specialists

Upskilling is a great retention tool that is often overlooked by employers. Offering career development opportunities can help you boost employee engagement over time, improving retention rates. It not only provides you with the talent you need, but it also helps show your staff you care about their professional careers. If you are wondering how you can help encourage your employees, read on.

Why You Should Invest in Upskilling

There are a number of reasons you should invest in upskilling your employees. First and foremost, it can help reduce turnover. When you provide your employees with opportunities to further develop their skills they will be more likely to stay with the company. This also helps you build upon the institutional knowledge of your organization because you are directly investing into your staff’s skills and expertise.

Because turnover rates will be lower, so will hiring costs. You can also use upskilling to teach people in your company the skills you need for any given project, moving them around as needed. As business needs are changing, employees often need to learn new technology or brush up on certain skills. In fact, over half of the U.S. workforce will need some kind of upskilling in 2022.

Upskilling doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive either. You just need to take a few hours a week to implement certain practices. There are processes and policies you can adopt to facilitate upskilling and cross-training in your organization.

Identify Where You Can Benefit From Upskilling

Before you jump into upskilling or reskilling your staff, you need to have a plan. Identify where there are skills gaps in your current team. Pinpoint what their strengths are and where they will eventually need additional training. This can help you invest your time and money wisely.

To do this, you need to be organized. Make a list of both soft and technical skills your company currently needs and will need in the future. Doing this will help you identify opportunities to introduce upskilling. Get your leadership team involved early. You should get feedback from leaders in the company to understand business needs from the inside.

Take the time to identify roles with the potential for growth or change as well. Speaking with your managers can give you an idea of what skills are becoming more virtual to the organization. Once you’ve done that, you can start moving forward with upskilling and reskilling efforts. Here are a few ways you can help your employees continue expanding their careers while they work with you.

Share Existing Training Resources With Everyone

If your company already has training resources used for specific roles in your organization, share that information with everyone. People who are interested in learning more about the company and its major roles will have access to the information they need. These resources can include training videos, webinars, industry insights, and other details to help support them in their career development.

Create Educational Guides for Your Staff

In addition to making your training materials readily available, you can create educational guides for employees. These guides provide information about how key employees in the company perform their roles. This way, if someone leaves your organization, you will have all the information you need to do the job. Most companies do this by creating step-by-step guides. You can also use screenshots to walk people through software, etc.

Encourage Cross-Functional Teamwork

Working with other teams can help employees discover new passions and develop new skills. You can identify employees that show a special interest in certain areas and then work with managers to determine if upskilling would be beneficial.

Offer Mentorship Opportunities in the Workplace

On top of encouraging teamwork across the departments, you should offer mentorship opportunities as well. Mentorship allows staff members to learn from each other too, but younger hopefuls learn from more seasoned coworkers. To encourage this type of relationship in the workplace, create mentor programs that everyone has access to. This will prevent anyone with a weaker network from missing out on this development opportunity.

Encourage Your Employees to Train Each Other

Similar to mentorship programs, you should encourage your staff to train each other. If you notice someone is especially skilled in one area or brings something special to the table, have them train other people on the staff. Their good habits will rub off on their coworkers. You might even consider recording a training session and sharing it with the entire organization.

Utilize Technology to Your Advantage

Technology is great, especially when you are trying to support your staff. There are a plethora of online learning applications and employee engagement solutions to help you manage upskilling your employees. Doing this allows your team to learn at their own pace while simultaneously gauging how they feel about the experience.

Looking for Help Attracting and Retaining Top Talent? 

The team at Burnett Specialists can help your organization with identifying beneficial upskilling efforts. We can also help pinpoint talent on your team who would be good candidates for the upskilling program. Beyond that, our team can assist you with all of your hiring needs, from recruiting to onboarding. Get more information about Burnett Specialists and how we can help you.

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