Don't Rehire - Reskill! (And Upskill While You're At It)

As if you don't have enough to worry about in your quest to obtain the best talent and keep them working for you during this time of The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, a new trend in the workforce will soon demand your attention. By 2025, in fact, the World Economic Forum predicts that almost 100 million jobs are likely to surface that do not exist yet, driven largely by advances in technology and digital transformation. In addition, 50% of all employees will need reskilling as technology adoption continuously increases over the next several years.

This is likely a reality you may already know more intimately than you wish you did. A McKinsey Global Survey found that 44% of respondents believe their organizations will face skill gaps in the next five years, while 43% are experiencing skill gaps now - in other words, a full 87% of employers are concerned about the people they have doing the work they need to be done.

Re-What? A Quick Overview

The idea of reskilling is still new enough that it's helpful to pause and review what we're talking about here. To reskill an employee is to teach them new skills to do a different job than the one they currently hold. Meanwhile, upskilling is the process of learning new skills, or of teaching your employees new skills to continue in their current roles more efficiently. To further complicate the conversation, there's newskilling, which involves preparing your current employees for new roles that don't exist yet (but will with the advent and use of new technologies.)

Upskilling allows your current staff to remain valuable and current in the work by learning new tools, tasks, and processes that relate to their present roles. It's also a fantastic mechanism to increase employee satisfaction and retention, given that dissatisfaction with advancement and development opportunities is one of the leading causes of employee departures. Reskilling, on the other hand, allows you to shuffle folks in your organization around rather than hiring new ones, and is most often used for workers whose jobs are changing - but not disappearing.

An Unwanted Side Effect

We know - that sounds hard enough...and introducing transformation into your workplace can also introduce the unwanted byproducts of disruption and dissatisfaction among your employees. Why? When you change the conversation about what skills are needed to do a job well, those who have been doing it longest - and who are usually the most senior - can feel threatened. On the flip-side, those who are most likely to take to reskilling and upskilling are often people who are more comfortable with technology and new ways of working, and there is a risk of them feeling frustrated at colleagues' resistance to rethinking the workplace.

The good news? There are smart, simple ways to avoid employee infighting while helping bring your team into the next generation of workers.

Get In Front of the Up/Re/Newskilling Revolution

To make sure your organization isn't left scrambling to meet the moment, or - worse - losing folks who see upskilling and reskilling opportunities elsewhere, there are a few simple steps you can take as a leader in your organization.

1) Be in the Know

Start by getting clarity on the competencies that are likely to be in demand. The Forum lists ten key must-knows for success in 2025 (and beyond.) They include.

Image Credit: World Economic Forum

2) What's Missing?

Think about the top skills that will be needed and are missing, weak, or only present in pockets at your organization. Some of the "softer" skills are easy to sidestep, but shouldn't be overlooked. For example, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility are pretty much nonnegotiable in any industry, and without them, employees struggle with the day-to-day, especially in new work situations.

3) Don't Confuse Training

There is an optimal mix of newskilling, upskilling, and reskilling that will be necessary to ensure you are adjusting to the changing needs of your industry, and that mix will be different for every organization. Once you've determined what that mix is, be strategic about redeploying people who may have roles that are being eliminated - these folks can be reskilled for new positions. People whose roles are shifting, or who are ready for more challenges are more suited to reskilling opportunities. Newskilling can absolutely be undertaken with internal folks, but roles that require this can also be the main focus of your hiring team.

4) Keep Hierarchies in Mind

Avoid the aforementioned infighting by being very clear with each employee about who is being reskilled, upskilled, or newskilled, and why. If at all possible, start those conversations by talking to your employees about where they see themselves in one, five, and ten years, and consider their positions accordingly. Whenever possible, allow workers at all levels of the organization to attend training together to ensure all staff that they are essential and that the team is "in this together."

Last, But Not Least- Get Help

With combined decades of experience working in human resources, Agile Talent Consulting has had to do our fair share of reskilling and newskilling our own team and we're ready to help you do the same. Don't get stuck with a workforce who isn't ready for what's next - reach out: we can help!