In today’s business environment, progress requires taking the initiative, making changes and keeping up with trends.

Instead of waiting for qualified talent to appear and fill open positions, take advantage of your existing talent pool. Implement training programs that can help you identify the employees that are eager to learn and willing to transition into different job roles. Identify the people willing to learn and expand their industry knowledge and leverage their desire to obtain new skills. Because believe it or not: This is what your employees are looking for.

Today, in the midst of The Great Resignation, people aren’t settling for unsatisfying and unfulfilling roles anymore. Instead, they want to learn, reinvent themselves and expand their knowledge. Modern job seekers expect their employers to support them and provide continuous learning and development (L&D) opportunities.

In one study, 80% of workers found that upskilling and reskilling helped them boost confidence on the job. But those are not the only reasons you should implement these processes. Reskilling can also increase employee retention, morale and company revenues.

However, it isn’t enough to develop the program and ask people to participate. Although it’s critical to be enthusiastic about this initiative, you should also take steps to maximize its accuracy and efficiency. Let’s examine some best practices for assessing skills gaps and reskilling top talent.

Identify Skills Gaps

Determine the direction you want your business to go in and what tools, knowledge and abilities your human capital needs to reach that destination. Assess the job roles and skills your workforce currently has to target skills gaps.

When conducting a skills assessment, consider whether your employees are equipped to drive the company vision. That should help you in highlighting what job roles may need to be reskilled to keep up with changing business demands. By keeping your workforce’s skills up to date, you can enable top talent to perform at their best.

Align Business Needs with Highly Sought-after Skills

After identifying what skills your workforce is lacking in, you can compare those findings to what skills they need today. Follow trending reports and find relevant data to ensure the company can stay ahead of its competitors and generate ground-breaking solutions.

Once you know what skills your workforce needs and what skills are trending in the business world, you can implement the right training to the right people. You may also realize that some employees already possess these much needed skills or that they may require additional training to boost their knowledge and capabilities. For example, with some training, a team member in customer service could have the right transferable skills for the sales team.

Provide the Right Training, to the Right People

Training should be tailored to fit an employee’s job role and the skills they will need to succeed. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach or developing the same program for every department or role. Include your employees’ insights in the design process, and ensure training aligns with their learning style. Boost your people’s motivation to participate in L&D offerings with attractive incentives.

Different workers want different approaches. Leverage the most suitable educational techniques and encourage seasoned workers and senior leaders to mentor employees. Reskilling programs should align with each worker’s and the skills they need to obtain.

For example, some people may prefer on-the-job training and hands-on learning, while other learners may prefer virtual training or a blended learning methodology. There’s also an option to learn through collaboration with peer-to-peer coaching and feedback. Discover what approach works best for your people to increase your training’s efficiency before developing the program.

After delivering your training program to the right talent, the next step is to measure its success. This is the only way you can prove the value of your L&D initiatives and track the progress of your reskilling efforts. Let’s take a look at four effective tips on how to measure your training program’s success.

4 Tips on How to Measure Your Reskilling Efforts

1. Costs Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Compare how much it costs to implement a reskilling program. Calculate training and administrative expenses and decide whether participants should take some time off from their current work. On average, companies spend $24,800 on training per employee.

According to the 2019 Rethinking the Build bs. Buy Approach to Talent by Josh Bersin, training and reskilling an internal employee might be $20,000 or less than hiring a new one. As a result, the employer would save as much as $116,000 per person over three years. Ultimately, you can determine how much your company’s revenues increased after skill building.

2. Productivity KPIs

Implement metrics that help you identify skill deployment effectiveness. Employees in a reskilling program can learn new skills that can enable them to work better and faster, increasing the efficacy of routine assignments.

Start by deciding the outcome of reskilling. What is it that employees should learn and do better as a result? Understanding this beforehand can help guide learners through the process and help them understand how to use their new skills and knowledge in their roles. Also, it makes it easier for you to measure how these new skills are impacting employee productivity.

3. People-centric KPIs

Better productivity and work shouldn’t be the only training objective. Leverage your organization’s reskilling program to improve employee engagement and increase retention. According to an IBM report, 42% of employees say they’re more likely to stay with a company after receiving training that enabled them to perform better in their roles. Use surveys and assessments to determine whether workers are happy with your reskilling initiatives and how these helped them improve.

You can also measure the impressions your reskilling program has on potential candidates. Advertise your company’s reskilling opportunities and track their impact on recruitment and hiring.

4. Team Manager Satisfaction KPIs

Although employees’ insights are valuable, they might not be sufficient to measuring the effectiveness of your reskilling program. This is why it may be necessary to reach out to team leaders and managers to gain their insight and feedback.

Wait a few weeks after employees complete the program to give team leads a chance to compile metrics and results. This will help leadership to highlight any differences in performance, productivity and team satisfaction.

Conclusion

Despite the benefits, many reskilling programs often fall short due to lack of preparedness, relevant tools and qualified talent. That’s why it’s necessary to identify skills gaps early on and choose the right people to reskill. The final, and perhaps, the most significant step is to measure your efforts.

As a result, you’ll gain valuable and timely insights that will allow you to close skills gaps and maximize your program’s success. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with another failed reskilling program.