Employees are the core of every business’ operations. However, as the business grows, the industry evolves, and the needs of the business shift, the workforce will need to adapt to those changes in order to succeed. Leveraging employee potential and working towards expanding their skills can help move the business forward.
Your workforce can adapt in two ways, either by hiring new talent to grow the organization or by upskilling employees to take on new and advance roles. While presented as a choice, many organizations have that choice made for them when hiring is either unfeasible at the moment or too challenging.
Businesses should always have a plan for upskilling employees.
What Is Employee Upskilling?
Employee upskilling aims to teach employees new skills tailored toward career development.
This can incorporate skills that focus on an employee’s current position, or skills that will prepare them for the next step in their career.
While upskilling can include many different skills across numerous industries, some examples of how employee upskilling can be accomplished include:
- Retail employees participating in certification programs for using CRM tools
- Manufacturing employees learning lean principles that help reduce waste and increase efficiency
- Finance employees taking online courses to further understand analytics software
Apart from the below strategies, employers should consider more best practices for upskilling employees wherever they can find them.
What Is an Employee Development Plan?
A great way to have a constant, in-motion plan to upskill employees is by creating and implementing employee development plans.
Working towards crafting a robust employee development plan that aims to train, upskill, and reskill the workforce can help retained employees perform higher-level tasks for bigger roles.
Here is everything you need to know when creating an employee development plan.
Strategies for Employee Development Plans
Learning how to capitalize on your staff’s skillsets is the beginning of the employee development planning process. There are many ways HR managers can conduct employee development plans that can prepare their employees for new opportunities, including additional hr training topics designed for training new HR staff.
Here are the important strategies to consider:
Promoting from Within
Before implementing an employee development plan, employers and HR managers should consider embracing promoting within. Incentivizing longtime employees within the organization can create a more dynamic employee experience by offering employees a chance to challenge themselves with new and different tasks.
Communicating internal promotion to the workforce can yield an array of benefits including:
- Improved employee retention and engagement
- Less time spent on an employee’s adjustment period
- Lower hiring costs
Executing Soft Skills Training
Soft skills are some of the most important skills an employee can have, going beyond their technical skills. When it comes to upskilling, soft skills are often overlooked.
Soft skills generally consist of multiple attributes that can be widely used in many scenarios. Examples of soft skills include but are not limited to the following:
- Personal traits such as empathy or work ethic
- Communication and listening skills
- Time management
- Critical thinking
- Team-Building
To capitalize on an employee’s soft skills, employers should conduct appropriate training for the soft skills to be taught. Some employers, depending on the size of the workforce, may choose to focus on specific employees to improve on a particular soft skill.
Due to the open-ended nature of soft skills at their core, there is no exact formula for soft skills training. However, some ways employers can incorporate soft skills training can include:
- Practice scenarios such as role-playing
- Assign gamified assessments
- Provide employee workshops
- Assign time to coach employees via mentorships or team learning activities
- Cross-train employees between roles
A key factor in soft skills training involves keeping the employees engaged in their work activities. Employee engagement in the evolving work environment should be a top priority for employers when implementing soft skills training.
Reskilling Employees
Traditionally, training employees to learn brand-new skills and strengthening their current ones is a more direct approach when putting together an employee development plan.
Reskilling is generally designed to help employees perform their current job role tasks more efficiently. However, in some cases, reskilling may pivot employees toward different paths instead.
Generally, employers reskill employees when their current job requires new techniques or new ways to accomplish tasks. Examples of employee reskilling may include:
- Learning to automate tasks with new technologies
- Understanding new techniques such as transitioning into digital formats
- Alter tasks based on regulation changes
Acquiring new techniques and experiences through reskilling is a core part of an employee development plan.
Employ a Succession Plan
Eventually, some employers or other senior-level positions may want to consider passing leadership responsibilities down to another high-performing employee. However, choosing the next employee to take on a higher level of responsibility is not a quick and easy decision.
Succession planning, a much more carefully organized employee development plan process, can be a long-term decision. Considering the weight of the decision succession planning can yield, employers should organize the following steps to ensure a successful transition:
- Identify the positions that will need to be filled
- List the important skills and traits required for the position
- Search for high-performing employees willing to advance
- Begin and evaluate employee training toward the position
Create Individual Development Plans
Depending on the basis of the employee development plan, it may be beneficial for employers to isolate employee development.
Individual plans can be used for many of the employee development strategies from upskilling to succession planning. Focusing on developing a single employee at a time to prepare them for a new position can have a positive impact on the employee and the surrounding company culture such as:
- Improved employee engagement and retention
- Visualizing a clear guideline for an employee’s career direction
- Boosting job satisfaction
- Building trust between employees and the managing staff
Using Performance Management to Track Progress
While not directly related to employee development, evaluating an employee’s performance as they undergo training is crucial for analyzing how effective the training is and if the employee is progressing at the expected level.
Employers can gather insights on an employee’s performance during an employee development plan by:
- Having a peer review system
- Training assessment results
- Reflective post-training self-evaluations
- Evaluate post-training employee behavior
- Measure relevant metrics to determine the ROI of training
Employers can gather and analyze key performance indicators of an employee’s performance effortlessly using a streamlined, cloud-based performance management software.
Get Help with Employee Development, Learning, and Training
Whether your employee development plan is focused on individual growth or generally growing your workforce, utilizing learning management software to help organize, develop, and track the learning process can accelerate employee growth and further their investment in the company. If you are struggling with employee development and upskilling, contact us today.
