Investing in your employees is investing in your company's future. Such an investment manifests through retaining skilled staff, bridging The Skills Gap, enhancing performance, and establishing your organization as a desirable workplace in your industry.
One approach to investing in your workforce is through upskilling. While it's true that exceptional employees will seek out new skills independently, there's no reason why a company shouldn't facilitate this learning journey.
More than 65% of workers agree that employer-offered upskilling is crucial when deciding whether to accept a job offer. A learning-oriented work culture is appealing to new job candidates.
Further, Eric Friedman from Forbes recently noted that by 2030 an estimated 85 million jobs may go unfilled due to labor shortages. That means talent competition is fierce. Upskilling is a powerful tool to consider.
The Value of Recognizing Existing and Potential Skills Within Your Workforce
Business leaders should understand and share their industry's precise skill set with their hiring manager or workforce solutions provider. This knowledge is ideal for staying innovative and competitive in hiring and retention efforts.
Effective hiring means more than having a team of individuals who excel in the specific skills required for their positions. It is also about having the right skill combinations among all your employees.
Are Soft Skills Important?
Soft skills are as critical as core competencies in today’s leading businesses. These skills include:
- Communication
- Adaptability
- Problem-solving
- Collaboration
- Leadership
The modern focus on automation, machine learning, and AI has made it essential for human workers to develop soft skills to stay competitive and find new avenues of opportunity to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.
These human-centric skills enable your team members to navigate quickly advancing technological changes, conceive and develop innovative solutions, and drive your company’s business strategy with agility and insight.
Understanding The Skills Gap
The Skills Gap is the divide between the company's required skills and the training and experience employees or candidates possess.
The great news is that you can correct a Skills Gap once you have conducted a skills audit, engaged in workforce planning, and invested in talent development programs. Once you identify Skills Gaps, you can create an upskilling path with free training opportunities.
Remember, staffing is not only about filling vacancies; it is also about sculpting a robust, dynamic, and equipped workforce to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
By investing time and resources into understanding and developing the skills within your workforce, you're not just building a team; you're cultivating an environment of continuous growth and learning.
Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning
According to TechTarget, a culture focused on continuous learning may be the secret sauce for retaining employees in today’s business environment. By providing training and professional development opportunities, you can beat the expense of employee turnover, which leads to re-launching the costly hiring process.
Instead of employees becoming bored and seeking another job, you can hold their attention with exciting promotions and leadership possibilities.
Implementing Effective Upskilling Programs
Upskilling is easy to implement and maintain. Here are some steps you can take to get started:
- Review your current employee list and lay out their existing skills
- Create a list of upcoming positions and new roles to achieve business goals.
- Categorize the necessary skills for each role.
- Compare those skills with those already held by employees in your company.
- Identify employees who can step into new roles with the right core skills and necessary upskilling.
Measuring the Impact of Upskilling
Finding ways to measure the impact of upskilling is critical. Select the right metrics to track, such as:
Training attendance
Average time to course completion
Learner satisfaction and retention rates
Time to proficiency/employee performance
Course completion
Engagement
Retention rates
Adjust your upskilling strategies based on feedback and results.
How to Resolve Skills Gaps
Employers often have a set-in-stone job requirement list, leaving little room for the learning potential. These business leaders may miss out on an otherwise amazing candidate ready to step up and learn the necessary skills.
When you discover how to resolve Skill Gaps, you can hire the right candidate, support them as they adopt the final few skills that align with your needs, and assist in turning them into your ideal employee for the role.
Identify Skill Gaps Among Employees
Our team first identifies candidate Skill Gaps by conducting industry-specific assessments, such as safety training quizzes, industry-focused aptitude tests, and face-to-face interviews.
We ask each candidate questions that align with their respective industry’s top skills and best practices to narrow down what they are missing and which of our courses can quickly bring them up to speed.
Review Clients’ Needs
The best strategy for determining your workforce's Skills Gaps is thoroughly analyzing your current operations and future business objectives. We regularly review the needs of our clients, covering all industries and jobs to drive our sourcing strategies. This information ensures that we seek candidates with relevant skills and encourage them to participate in our free training for upskilling opportunities.
Our workforce managers regularly ask our clients questions like the following:
Where is your business headed?
What are some industry trends that could affect your company’s future?
What is the condition of the labor market?
Will the skills your employees currently have sustain and propel your growth?
Develop Upskilling Plans
Once we know our clients’ needs and the skills our available workforce currently and potentially possesses, we work to anticipate those needs and create plans to help us maintain a pool of employees ready for assignments in those areas.
Upskilling Opportunities for a Customized Workforce
Today’s workforce understands the value of leveling up their skills.
At Surge, we have developed a substantial library of training courses covering topics across all industries. We continue adding to this collection with our clients’ needs in mind. We aim to ensure we have qualified talent ready to enter a new role with the skills and confidence to benefit both of you.
Here are some of our top free skills training opportunities to help you and your employees thrive together:
Food Safety
We offer various food safety courses covering production, manufacturing, and hospitality, including:
- Food Safety – Cross-contamination
- Food Safety – Hygiene
- Food Safety – Allergen Awareness
- Food Safety – Retail
- Food Safety – Hospitality: Food Services Best Practices
- Food safety – Exposure Control of Bloodborne Pathogens
- Food and Pharmaceuticals Safety – Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)
Information Technology
The reliance on workforce solutions teams for building robust IT teams is increasing. If you need talent in this area, we offer upskilling possibilities through extensive IT free training skills, including:
- Cybersecurity: Ransomware, Information Security, Data Privacy, and Cybersecurity 1.0
- Cloud Computing
- Cryptography (Coding)
- Wire and Cable Management
Office/Professional
The modern office is dynamic, and businesses increasingly invest in the latest technology. Our flexible workforce must stay up-to-date on it all with these courses and more to be ready for your order to come in:
- Managing Conflict in the Workplace
- Creative Problem Solving
- Communicating Effectively
- Become an Effective Leader
- Office 365
- Interview Skills
Additional Courses for Our Clients and Their Employees
Our free skills training courses sometimes defy formal categorization, but they are worth noting for those seeking candidates with leadership, sales, team building, and time management skills:
- 10:09 AM
- A Motivator’s Toolkit
- A New Way to Train Employees
- Always Be Closing
- Asking Questions
- Be Assertive the Right Way
- Be Likeable
- Build Your Team
- Commitment & Consistency
- How to Handle Sales Objections
- And many others…
Would Labor Planning Help You Meet Your Business Objectives?
At Surge, we believe in the transformative power of upskilling. It is vital to employee engagement, retention, and organizational growth for our partner businesses.
Is it time to ask yourself if your current strategies are helping you keep pace? As the business landscape continues to change rapidly, preparing your workforce with the skills of tomorrow is essential.
Our account managers specialize in identifying Skill Gaps and doing what is necessary to fill them to suit your company’s dynamic requirements. We ensure that our workforce is equipped for their current role and prepared to embrace future innovations, advancements, and opportunities eagerly and with pitch-perfect preparation.
Whether you need tailored training programs or strategic, long-term role mapping, we are excited to offer our existing training modules or work with you to create what you need.
Contact us to learn more about our free skills training for upskilling and customized workforce management programs to take the next steps toward securing your company’s future through upskilling.
