As an HR professional, you have insight into all of the departments in the organization. With a birds’-eye view of the different teams, it’s easy to see which teams are falling behind or stalled in their projects due to a lack of skilled resources.
Not taking action and watching your employees suffer can negatively affect revenue and profit. These days, in order to differentiate your business, it’s vital to use IT effectively.
If your employees don’t have the critical skills needed to keep up with the changing technical environment, they will not be able to effectively complete their projects to help the company soar.
The solution lies in upskilling your team members so they have vital knowledge and hands-on experience in the latest technologies required for their current or future projects.
The benefits of an effective upskilling program
There are numerous IT training and upskilling opportunities available — but not all of them are created equally. With an effective upskilling program in place, your organization can experience a number of key benefits:
- Boost in productivity: When employees have the knowledge they need to complete their projects, they can spend less time learning and more time doing.
- Better content absorption: Effective upskilling programs typically utilize a number of learning delivery models, such as self-serve e-learning, hands-on labs, and practical assessments. Through multi-modal learning, employees can absorb material in various ways and relate it back to their roles.
- Highly engaged employees: Upskilling employees not only helps the company, it also benefits the employees themselves. When they see that their organization believes in their potential and wants to invest in it, it pushes them to engage deeply at work.
- Streamlined learning experience: Using a single upskilling program, as opposed to multiple learning platforms, makes learning easier and more streamlined for employees.
- Less time away from work: One of the major challenges of implementing any kind of training program is taking people away from their projects to take the course. With an effective upskilling program, the goal is to minimize the time away from work while maximizing the learning opportunities.
Key processes to consider when designing your upskilling program
To experience the benefits of an effective upskilling program, you have to design it strategically. Upskilling that is delivered in the right way and includes the right content helps provide your organization with a competitive advantage. Consider these 5 steps when designing your program:
1. Start with SMART goals
Using SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) is an effective way to determine learning objectives for the IT upskilling program. What do you want to achieve? When do you want to achieve it by? How will you measure the success of your IT upskilling program? For example, do you want to increase productivity by 10% every quarter? Do you want to shave a month off your production schedule? Do you want to beat a competitor to market? Identify your priorities and design an upskilling program to achieve them.
2. Create a customized curriculum
When designing a training program of any kind, it’s vital to consider what your team already knows, where the gaps are in their learning, and what obstacles are blocking them from achieving their learning goals. The curriculum for the IT upskilling program should be customized based on the learning needs of the employees.
3. Offer multi-modal content delivery
How do your employees learn? It’s likely most employees require a combination of learning delivery models such as online lectures, self-serve reading, and hands-on labs. By providing both independent learning and instructor-led learning, you can give employees the opportunity to learn at their own pace as well as engage with a live instructor to ask questions and clarify answers.
4. Assess your team’s learning
In addition to taking the upskilling program, employees need to be assessed on their learning. Have they absorbed all of the material in the course? If not, where do they have gaps? Assessments such as hands-on projects help employees apply what they have learned to real-world scenarios they would experience in the workplace.
5. Incorporate employee feedback
While designing the curriculum, learning delivery models, and assessments, it’s imperative to check in with employees to gather their feedback. They can provide insight into whether you’re covering the right material, providing focus on important concepts, and have allocated enough time to complete the training in addition to their workplace projects. Iterate the training once you have had a complete run-through with any improvements the employees suggest.
Lean on the experts in IT upskilling and training
Designing and implementing IT upskilling is a full-time job that requires specialized expertise. If you have multiple HR priorities on your plate, it can be challenging to commit time to create an upskilling program that will help you reach your business goals.
Partnering with an IT upskilling and training company like Web Age Solutions makes business sense. With decades of experience working with large-scale enterprise organizations in a range of industries, we understand the importance of getting people back to work while making sure they have the knowledge to provide your company with a competitive edge.
We take care of all of the upskilling course details, such as designing the curriculum based on your team’s learning needs and overseeing the logistics of delivering the course to your team. You can focus on high-level HR strategic tasks while we teach and assess your team so they are ready to navigate the changing technical environment.
