2020 has been an extremely unique year—full of challenges, uncertainties, and adjustments. 2020 has had direct impact on how we do business, how we manage our teams, and how we serve our customers.
Upskilling and reskilling are terms used nowadays as a means to adjust to this year’s struggles, as well as the impact of the advancing technology in automation and artificial intelligence (AI), that threaten the livelihoods of workers around the world. This rising adoption of technology and AI to assume many jobs usually performed by people, started the urgency to upskill and to reskill workers so they can maintain employment in the company.
Upskilling vs. Reskilling
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, upskilling is defined as, “the process of learning new skills or of teaching workers new skills. Reskilling is defined as, “the process of learning new skills so you can do a different job, or of training people to do a different job.” Both talk about learning/teaching of new skills. But how are they distinct?
Upskilling
Upskilling and reskilling differ on the context on how learning is used. In upskilling, it’s all about adding new knowledge and expertise to an employee to be more valuable in their current role. It’s like providing IT certifications to technicians and engineers to be better skilled to do well in their roles, or a manager being enrolled in graduate studies in business and management, or getting them into an MBA program.
Reskilling
On the other hand, reskilling is about adding knowledge and expertise in order for that employee to take on a new job within the same organization. It’s like cross-training.
In our organization, like many others, most of our ‘brick and mortar’ branch offices have had to close or be in limited operations due to the pandemic. Since the current operating model requires fewer employees, there is now a surplus of resources that can be used somewhere else.
Despite limiting the business through our physical locations, other areas like, online support, lending, customer service, and other banking operations remained intact, if not increased in customer consumption. This calls for the reskilling of employees from our branch teams. Many underutilized employees from other areas are now being trained to take phone calls, process mortgage applications, and other banking roles.
Other organizations have also stopped hiring in 2020 to mitigate operational costs. Due to the job freeze, many of their recruiters are now in need of new skills to do other jobs within the company. Some were also trained to take mortgage applications, and others were even trained to do IT work—specifically in IT support or in the IT help desks.
Hiring Freeze + Upskilling/Reskilling
As earlier mentioned, companies are now forced to freeze hiring in 2020 to limit operating costs. Despite having to limit expenses, there is still work to be done. There are parts of the organization that still require additional manpower for them to be successful. Upskilling and reskilling play a critical role to keep these organizations afloat.
We’ve talked about some of those examples above, but it’s important to note that upskilling and reskilling are means for companies to avoid layoffs. These efforts now require companies to conduct swift, but robust, training to ensure success of the reskilled employee. Leaders also carry an important role to maintain employee engagement and morale during these adjustments.
Formula for a successful reskilling
Reskilling does not stop in finding a demand and conducting the training. There are other factors that affect these movements. Leaders need to be hyper-focused in two outputs—a successful transition to the new job, meaning successful transfer of job skills, and a successful assimilation of the employee to the new role.
Training + [Job Output + (Job Assimilation x Employee Engagement)] = Successful Reskilling
This is covered by OECD senior economist, Glenda Quintini, on her paper, “Returns to different forms of job-related training: Factoring in informal learning.” According to Quintini, “It’s not just about a medium of learning but rather about learning in service of an outcome, which is usually the successful transition into a new job or the ability to successfully take on new tasks.”
In conclusion
Upskilling and reskilling are activities centered around learning new skills. May it be to develop an employee to be more valuable in their current role (upskilling), or to train new skills in order to prepare an employee to take on a new role within a company (reskilling). Both help organizations to be flexible and to be resilient in the changes in the economy and in the marketplace. Both help organizations avoid layoffs, while providing needed resources for businesses that demand for more workers.
Crowdsourcing FTW
Did your organization face any major changes this year in relation to the pandemic? Were you able to adjust to the new environment? What struggles did you experience? How did you address those challenges with the limited resources? Did your organization use upskilling and reskilling as a way to adapt?