Increasingly strategic for companies, talent management is the subject of constant vigilance on the part of leaders and HR teams. Skills have always been the backbone of the world of work. But for a long time, leaders did not make them a priority or a strategic investment. Some organizations could track the required and associated skills, but skills development generally did not go further than that.
However, after more than two years of the health crisis, leaders no longer see things the same way. Skills (find our skills guide here ) are the subject of particular attention from leaders, who consider the development of new skills as their main priority for 2024and this will be done through a training strategy. With the World Economic Forum predicting that 50% of the global workforce will need to develop their skills by 2025, this change in direction could not come at a more important time.
Only 28% of employees say their company has a good training strategy in place. So what should you do to improve your upskilling strategy in 2024?
1 Focus on employees
The best upskilling training doesn’t tell employees how to develop their skills; instead, it lets them take the lead. While your employees may want to develop their expertise in their current field, their careers can take many different directions. When upskilling is rooted in an employee’s unique goals and interests, they’ll be more inspired to learn the skills they need to advance their career. Therefore, it’s best to understand where an employee’s ambitions lie before working with them to create an action plan, such as during their annual review. Keep in mind that this step comes after you’ve established your training strategy and, of course, a skills framework.
2 Focus on learning through experience
Upskilling strategies can’t rely solely on continuing education content. While compelling training is a great place to start, your employees must also have opportunities to put what they’re learning into practice. Incorporating related projects, assignments, and shadowing opportunities will give employees the experience they need to become experts, rather than novices, in what they’re learning.
3 Mentoring is important
Co-learning systems are a powerful skill development tool because they allow employees to observe how their more experienced colleagues perform tasks and ask them questions throughout the process. At the same time, mentors will develop the leadership skills they need to confidently lead teams, creating a mutually beneficial relationship for everyone involved.
4 A training strategy requires feedback
Just as there are always opportunities for your employees to grow, there are always things you can do to improve your training strategy.
How do I know if the training courses are in line with what my employees are looking for?
The answer is simple: ask your employees. The people who participate in your initiative will have an idea of what your training is lacking, what they would like to see more of, and what stands out as a strength. Once you have this feedback, work to implement it so that employees feel heard and encouraged to continue to share their ideas. Enabling your employees to upskill significantly reduces skills obsolescence, which is very important when you consider that 85% of the jobs of 2030 do not exist yet!
5 Don’t forget Reskilling and Cross-skilling
While there’s no doubt that upskilling is important, you can’t lose sight of other ways to build skills. Some employees may be looking to take their careers in a completely new direction, which is where reskilling comes in. Additionally, certain skills will become necessary for every employee in your organization, highlighting the need to integrate cross-skilling as part of your overall skills strategy.
One of the most important challenges for HR in 2024 will be to succeed in accelerating training but with simpler processes.
For this, there are digital adoption platforms such as Shortways which allow all employee profiles to be supported on very specific themes of their business software (annual interview, purchase request, etc.).
But what is a digital adoption platform? It is simply a user support tool that is digitalized and directly integrated into HRIS (Talentsoft, SAP SuccessFactors) or ERP (Oracle, Salesforce, etc.).
Using this type of assistant allows you to communicate better with your users and train them on processes and tools independently.