Importance of upskilling and reskilling for your organization

Written by:

Bo Dury

Reviewed by :

Date created

May 5, 2022

Last updated:

June 26, 2024

5 min read

L&D Strategy

Table of content

Key takeaways

• Digitization is causing 1.6 million jobs to disappear or change, leading to a need for continuous upskilling and reskilling of employees.

• Future-proof skills include both digital and human skills like problem-solving and stakeholder management.

• Organizations need to invest in training employees in Power Skills to stay competitive and adapt to changing skills requirements.

• Despite recognizing the need for upskilling and reskilling, many organizations are unprepared for changing skills and widening skill gaps.

• Learning and development, including the use of VR and Power Skills training, is crucial for organizations to stay competitive and retain talented employees.

Due to digitization, 1.6 million jobs are at risk of disappearing or changing in the coming years.

Digitization brings on changes that affect many functions and organizations and, as a whole, our entire way of working. The biggest changes of this revolution are particularly automation and data exchange.

If organizations want to stay future-proof, it is crucial to continuously improve the skills and knowledge of employees, in other words to invest in upskilling and reskilling. Research shows that the essential skills of the future are not just digital skills, but impactful human skills such as problem-solving and stakeholder management. These are the skills that will keep your employees relevant in their role and prepared for the future.

Read our research on:

The Importance of Personal Development

Upskilling and reskilling companies

With these changes, organizations need to adapt and face the challenge. It’s about training new skills that will enable employees to stay productive and to perform. The nature of our work is changing because technology is now more disruptive than ever and the shelf-life of skills is too short. Continuous up- and reskilling is the only solution to keeping the workforce empowered.

Training employees in future-proof skills is vital if organizations want to (out)perform, invest in growth, make an impact and stay ahead of competitors.

Whitepaper on Upskilling

Upskilling for the future

Our world is changing. Technological advancement, automation, globalization… these are all factors that are shaping our future. Unfortunately, there is no glass ball that we can use to look ten or twenty years ahead of time. But even though we do not know what the future will look like, the one thing that is for certain is that change is inevitable.

Our world, and world of work is subject to continuous change. Organizations are moving, functions are changing and the skills we need to perform are changing with them. Both soft and hard skills have a short shelf life, and don’t stay as relevant as they used to. Hard skills especially lose their relevance, because of continuous changes, within 2,5 years.

The current education system is not keeping up with these continuous changes. Therefore neither are our skills. Employees are not getting enough opportunities to learn the skills they need to perform their jobs (reskilling), or updating and adding to the skills they already have (upskilling). Now, more than ever, organizations need to rely on their most important asset: their people and their potential. The current workforce has the potential to make a difference in the future. Provided employees will have the right tools and skills to adapt.

Often the focus is on hard skills, and other times on soft skills. However, the combination of both can prove more powerful: Power Skill. A term first introduced by HR guru Josh Bershin. Power Skills are capabilities based on market needs that focus on important future proof competencies. Future competencies require both soft ánd hard skills. These skills will help shape the future of work.

Research shows that although organizations are very aware of changing skills and widening skills gaps, that many are not yet ready to adapt flexibly.

“Only about 9% of CHROs say their organizations are prepared for the future, and about 60% of board members believe their industries are going to substantially transform in the next five years.” Gds Group

Lepaya research supports this. Even though 42% of Dutch employees think that their current skills will no longer be relevant when practicing their jobs in 20 years, their organizations however are not yet investing in further training. 37% perfect of HR-professionals agree that their organizations still pays insufficient attention to up- and reskilling.

What Do Organizations Think About Upskilling?

Upskilling strategy

What we see is that the management level at many organizations, 1 in 3, expect the skills gap to widen even faster than HR professionals are thinking themselves. Not in 20 years time, but in 10 years time employees will not have the right skills to perform their jobs, according to managers.

As many as 80% of CEOs worry about the need for strengthening their team’s capabilities.

What Do Employees Think About Upskilling?

So what are the skills that employees need to keep performing well, now and in the future? Research, by renowned institutions such as World Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review and McKinsey, shows that there are 8 future proof Power Skills that employed need to make that difference.

Employees don’t start at zero, not even starters. Everyone already owns a set of skills, however there is always room for improvement and development. That is where the Power Skills come in. Experts have translating Power Skills into clear behaviors that can be trained in a practical way. Power Skills training can help employees reskill, learn the new skills they need, or upskill, add to their existing skill-set.

What are the Top 10 Future Skills?

What are the right skills when you want to upskill your workforce?

The future-proof skill sets that were researched are combinations of functional and non-funtional skills:

Power Skills

With empowered employees organizations can stay productive, focus on growth and stay ahead of the competition.

Whitepaper on Power Skills

Upskill your employees with Power Skills

As mentioned 80% of CEOs worry about the need for strengthening their team’s capabilities. While also 60% of CEO’s agree thattheir employees skill set is the biggest challenge to remain competitive. Around 40% of employees believe their current skill set will not stay relevant in future labor markets, while less than 50% feel that upskilling is really a priority for their employers.

Learning and development is now more important than ever. It can be the difference between staying competitive as an organization, hiring and retaining talented employees, and losing many employees because of skills mismatches.

As mentioned, it is not about a focus on training either soft or hard skills. It is the combination of both functional and non-funtion competencies that make for future-proof skill sets.

No Soft or Hard Skills but Power Skills

Power Skills are those skill-sets, that will make sure your employees have the right skills for their role. Investing in training Power Skills now, will make a big impact.

Power Skills are the Future

Upskilling and reskilling solutions

Looking at your L&D curriculum, are you looking at changing roles and training employees in the skills they need? Is your organization investing in the right L&D solutions and tools?

There are many questions that HR and L&D professionals ask themselves continuously: Is the learning offer in line with the strategic business and HR objectives?

Is your L&D Offering Up to Date?

Skills change, and so should the way we teach and train those skills. That is why we look for new and improved ways of training effectively.

What we found was 30 minutes of VR can improve the effectiveness of training by 10%, leaving learners better prepared to use and apply new skills on the job.

Is your organization training in the most effective way? Or could VR-solutions boost your L&D offering, and learn and develop skills effectively in less time.

VR within Learning

What are the benefits of upskilling and reskilling employees

Since human capital, or talent, is your most important asset, L & D has become a top priority.

“L&D has earned a seat at the corporate strategic planning table, and is consulted as early as other functional areas when new initiatives are planned.”(10)

Via learning and development your employees will be able to live up to their full potential, working with the right skill set, and your organization will be able to achieve results; now and in the long term. With a focus on shaping a healthy culture and talent and promoting creativity and new behaviour while at the same time driving business, L&D really is the way to go.

Bringing along many positive effects for organizations once they invest.

Top 5 reasons to start with L&D today

Where do companies begin with upskilling employees

A L&D strategy covers many aspects within a busines, but the basics is the learning platform that holds all the training, journeys and data. So what to invest in? What is the learning software or learning platform that fits your organization, your employees’ needs and supports your overall L&D?

What is the Best L&D platform?

After covering the basics for your strategy, you want to make sure that the outcome of your L&D effort results in measurable impact. But when it comes to L&D impact there is no silver bullet, yet. Where do organizations start with learning analytics? Which metrics are the most important to track? What are common obstacles and how do you overcome them?

Bo Dury, Impact Lead at Lepaya will share her insights on measurable impact, Lepaya’s own strategy when it comes to learning analytics, and best practices to experiment with.

Let’s talk

There are many ways that lead to Rome. When it comes to measuring changes in learner’s behavior there is not one answer. There are, however, best practices when it comes to learning analytics.

Many L&D partners for instance look at the Rose of Leary and ROI period to create insights into performance data.

Check out these learning analytics theories, and see which one applies to your L&D strategy.

The ROI pyramid:

The ROI Pyramid of Learning and Performance

The Rose of Leary theory:

High Performing Teams because of the Rose of Leary

Finding the right L&D platform to store data, and measuring learning analytics can be complex. It has to fit the business, fit your employees’ learning needs. You just want to make sure you can show the progress of your strategy to your stakeholders.

Finding the right L&D partner to take care of the learning and development journeys of your employees from a-z, can be the solution.

A L&D partner can assess the learning and development needs of your employees, and put that into practice. Through blended learning programs combined with online and in-person instruction centered on informative bites, your employees will re- and upskill.

But not just blended learning, specifically programmatic learning, which prioritizes ongoing learning, rather than one-off events. As well as flipped classroom sessions that let employees soak up information on their own before coming together as a group for an interactive, cohort-based experience. Spaced-out repetitions allow employees to repeatedly interact with material over time to increase retention. And since it all takes place in the flow of work, learning becomes part of life and results in noticeable behavioral impact.

When a L&D partner focuses on the training and fits that to your strategy, you can focus on your employees. Especially when everything your L&D partner does is based on data analytics. Lepaya does exactly that. We use information to evolve and innovate quickly, and can adjust offerings to meet the needs of learners and organizations. With a global reach, borders don’t get in our way and we’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are.

Why Choose Lepaya?

How to upskill enterprise organizations

Fellowmind is an organization in transition. Their employees are re- and upskilling from implementation partners to digital transformation partners. Requiring new and additional skills-set to the diver role. So how does an enterprise such as Fellowmind ensure that employees structurally up- and reskill so that they become even better business partners for their clients?

Case study about Fellowmind

KPMG is a multinational enterprise with many different disciplines and expertise within its ranks. So how does a global enterprise such as KPMG develop a dynamic, overarching learning path that lets consultants develop to expert level through a personalized L&D approach?

Case study about KPMG

Where to start with upskilling and reskilling

Download the whitepaper on upskilling and reskilling strategies, and start empowering your workforce.

Whitepaper on Upskilling