We all know the worth of the digital world today. There is so much competition between the companies and the employees, as who is superior in the usage of this Digi-centric world. Traditional ways of learning and services have taken a back seat now; more and more people have started equipping the perks of computerized learning. Even the companies ask for what specialized skills they employ have before employing them. The more specialized skills, the more one have chances of being selected.

UPSKILLING is the way of workplace trend which a company provides to their respective employees to enhance their skills and work strategies. This makes them more equip towards challenging competition amongst others.

Why is it important?

As technology advancement creates new opportunities and job vacancies within the workplace, it becomes more important for companies to fill these new positions with new employees who possess relevant and specialized skill sets. Upskilling fills the gap of incompetency and makes us more digitally opportune. Hence adding more relevancy to one’s skill set and technical advancement.

Instead of hiring new employees for every new work, Companies can provide their employees with such exposure to increasing abilities and skillsets on a low budget and in minimal time. This will also contribute to saving money and time for the company. With this, companies can make their employees feel more valued and technology equipped.

Furthermore, the key points of why it is important are –

• Upskilling adds more relevancy to one’s skill set and technical knowledge;
• It fills the gap of extra recruitment in the company, hence saving money;
• Provides more growth and stability to the employee;
• Increase of Competitive growth within the company and amongst the others.

What strategies could be adapted for upskilling?

While creating such upskilling strategies, firstly, Companies should identify what technical gap they are lacking within themselves?

Secondly, the company should foresee the long-term and short-term value of skill development. For instance, the skill that is useful for an employee may not be of advantage for a business. Marketing changes rapidly in any business and thus the required skills as well.

Now when the company has identified what they are lacking within the core, they can work accordingly. Also, with distinctive changes in the industrial trends, one must modify the skill as per the requirement.

There are many steps that can be taken to develop the upskilling;

• Virtual learning
• Mentoring
• “Rest and learn” sessions

Now, the company should start several learning and training sessions, while keeping in mind the following factors-

• Whether the volume learning sessions are needed or the individual learning would work more effectively;
• Who can productively manage these mentoring sessions? Is it the company itself or some external sources that are needed;
• Which learning sessions are more beneficial?- online learning, updated training or other courses;
• Additionally, to best understand

which technique would work effectively, the institute must consider the specific requirements and goals of their workers and plan accordingly. As each person possesses different skills and goals, the upskilling strategies differ in every case, based on one’s interest, their skills, the position of that work, and what can contribute to their evolving roles in the company. Communication between the learner and the learned during the period of learning, would clarify the needs and obstacles of a particular employee.

To make the learning more effective, the company can offer additional financial incentives to its employee. This will ensure true and productive learning amongst the learners. Educational debates, conferences, personalized training will increase the advantages of a particular employee in upskilling management.

Some of the strategies could be –

• Specific upskill requirement for a particular vacancy. This will add chances of selection of the employee. More Addition to it, employees can present a certificate of excellence in front of the hirer, which will further increase his/her chances of getting selected.
• The personal development plan should be given equal importance and time. One knows himself better than others. Hence, the company should allow them to devote time to grooming themselves.

A specific description of upskilling techniques-

As mentioned earlier,

• Virtual learning, through this enhanced learning experience, One can learn or train themselves about the skill gap they are lacking or in which they pour their interest. This could be provided by the company as per the change in the trend of industries and marketing. The online learning environment would make them more digitally equipped as well.

• Mentoring, often companies provide specific mentors to train the employees regarding online learning, various digital strategies, skilling courses, and others. This not only helps the trainees to learn but also provides merit in the mentoring and leadership skills of the assigned mentor.
• “Rest and learn” session, for those busy birds who don’t have additional time outside their work and personal life, they can use their lunch breaks or coffee breaks as a training/learning session. The company can assign an external mentor for it or it could be a mentor from within the company. Pondering upon the time, lunch sessions are quite minimal. Thus in addition to it, and for managing minimal time, the mentor could provide short videos of 5-10 minutes or even a low-key conversation. This is a microlearning technique.

Now, this is obvious, every coin has its double side and eventually every aspect of life too. So if there are numerous benefits of Upskilling, there could be some pitfalls too.

Let’s see, what those are:

• The result of training will only be seen if taught regularly in a frequent period of time. So that the competitive edges in the learning trend can be adapted as much as possible. One time thing won’t work as this is nothing of mathematics! The more the practice or regularity in learning, the more the clarification in results.
• With changing time, traditional learning of methods should also change. Those “always pre-prepared” presentations won’t be full-proof now. The employees want the session to be more engaging, relevant, and interactive so that every other can pour their suggestions or queries on the table. This will also improve “employee retention” in the company.

Additional benefits-

• Customer and employee satisfaction, the happier and engaging the employee, the more the chances of treating the customer well.
• Retention of employees, improved employee retention results in decreased employee turnover. The engagement of the company with the productive growth of its employees would last a committed impact on the employees.
• Moving with the trend, learning new and updated skills as per the trend will help the company and its employee to remain in the competitive edge of the industry and market.