The skills employees need are changing fast. According to labor market analytics provider Lightcast, between 2021 and 2024, one-third of the skills required for the average job changed.
It’s unsurprising, then, that 63% of employers surveyed as part of the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report” cite skills gaps in the labor market as the most significant barrier to business transformation.
A skilled workforce is crucial for the success of any organization. For talent development professionals at the forefront of learning and development (L&D) initiatives, this requires taking stock of these business-critical skills requirements and uncovering where they currently exist.
But gaining visibility into workforce capabilities is only half the story. An adaptable, future-ready talent strategy connects employees to internal career development opportunities that matter to them.
That’s why building organizational capabilities must be an ongoing, collaborative process between L&D teams, employees and direct managers, underpinned by learning technology.
Here are four ways to build an agile upskilling strategy that evolves with your organization’s needs.
1. Identify Necessary Skills
You can’t close skills gaps without first knowing they exist. This requires an inventory of your organization’s job roles, the associated skills and the current competencies of each role. Traditionally, the process involved gathering information, such as assessments and performance reviews, to identify existing competencies and areas for improvement. However, this method can often be time-consuming. Plus, a static skills framework doesn’t reflect real-time shifts.
Using the right set of tools can help you quickly and effectively understand the skills your organization needs, identify critical gaps, and then use this information to target training. Organizations achieving positive improvements as a result of career development initiatives understand this, as research indicates they’re 1.4 times more likely to have robust AI tools and processes in place. A platform with AI assistance can help you quickly identify and map these skills, as well as connect relevant learning content.
Incorporating dynamic, industry-specific labor market data can provide an additional level of insight, helping you to see the emerging, declining and business-critical skills associated with job roles. When embedded into a learning platform, you can connect it to your organization’s existing data about employee training, career progression and job performance.
2. Personalize Career Development
Upskilling must be a partnership between an organization and its employees. A robust skills taxonomy can make learning more meaningful for employees by helping them understand their current skills requirements, directing them toward roles and career paths they might be interested in and making progress actionable with development plans.
When these skills are visible within a learning management system (LMS), it’s easier for employees to see their current skill sets and areas where they could be utilized, along with current or emerging gaps. This data can be used to help employees find learning that supports their personal goals while ensuring alignment with business needs.
The information that employees share within an LMS as they engage in learning, build development plans and provide feedback to others can add context to skills data, directing them to more relevant and meaningful learning and development opportunities.
3. Give People Managers Skills Data
Direct managers play a key role in employee upskilling initiatives, with 46% of HR professionals stating managerial support is the factor with the most influence on employee learning.
Partnering with people managers is beneficial because they can offer valuable insights into the skills employees possess and the opportunities that matter to them. They can also help people clarify their goals and align them with specific career paths, allowing organizations to target the required skills through development plans.
When managers have access to team-wide skills development data, they can most effectively oversee and direct workforce development. An up-to-date and in-the-moment overview of goals, competency levels and training progression can help employees understand what they’re doing well and how to improve.
4. Capture and Validate Skills
HR professionals surveyed in a Bridge report say that the following forms of training are the most effective:
- On-the-job learning from managers, peers or experts (78%)
- Coaching and mentoring (64%)
- Learning by doing (55%)
When you use skills as the foundation for these learning opportunities, you help people understand the competencies required to move into their desired roles. Matching learners with projects, mentors, and feedback opportunities through your LMS can improve visibility into development and validate progress over time.
Encouraging peer feedback also strengthens skill validation. Collecting these frequent insights within your LMS helps people gain actionable, year-round insight from a variety of perspectives. This helps to measure competency levels over time, offering deeper insight into skills gained from informal and on-the-job training.
A Final Word About Skills Development
Data-driven insights and dynamic learning tools make it possible to keep pace with the ever-changing skill landscape. When employees can visualize their progress, managers can make informed development decisions and L&D teams can align learning with business strategy, the result is an agile workforce ready for whatever comes next.
The future of work may be unpredictable, but with the right mindset, tools and collaboration, your upskilling strategy doesn’t have to be.
