Why upskilling and reskilling is both necessary and feasible for employers

Contributed Article
September 14, 2020 1:43 am
Melanie Weaver Barnett, Chief Executive Education Officer, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

We seem to always talk about constant and rapid change, as well as the need for staying ahead. However, the lightning-fast changes associated with working during the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed vulnerabilities and significant gaps to fill in our organisations’ capability sets. Some of these critical gaps appear in areas of supply chain resilience, digitisation and leading virtual teams.

With virtual options becoming available, it is more feasible than ever to access learning opportunities. The key, as always, is to ensure you are being effective with your reskilling and upskilling dollars, by engaging in high quality learning experiences that are designed with your outcomes in mind.

It is both necessary and feasible for employers to invest in upskilling and reskilling to ensure competitive success in what has become a more VUCA world, that is a world which is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than ever. It is the ideal time for employees to make the case for the company to support them in reskilling and upskilling opportunities.

Working from home involves many of the same capabilities as when working in an office, but the twist is that these skills are required in the virtual environment. In a world where more team members are not co-located, organisations, leaders and workers are challenged to:

  • Craft a winning strategy
  • Catalyse and deliver on innovation
  • Effectively manage projects
  • Build their team
  • Ensure the emotional health of their employees
  • Manage and develop talent
  • Create the culture that enables the strategy

Many other skills, knowledge and abilities are essential as well. Depending on your industry or even your business within that industry, some of these are more important than others, but the future of successful work, regardless of whether we have had a pandemic, is going to require:

  • Digitisation. Not just the digitisation of transactions, but also of communication, sales, relationships, networks, management and more.
  • Facility with artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics.
  • Building and sustaining resilient, agile supply chains.

When it comes right down to it, all of this depends on leaders to navigate and guide the way. Leadership skills may evolve over time and vary among organisations and situations, but they are always critical and require continual improvement. The job of the leader in the new normal is to build resilient organisations, and that requires resilient, capable, confident, cooperative, agile, intelligent and learning-oriented employees. Better get moving on that reskilling and upskilling.

Melanie Weaver Barnett, Chief Executive Education Officer, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
Melanie Weaver Barnett, Chief Executive Education Officer, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

Key takeaways

  • Covid-19 pandemic has revealed vulnerabilities and significant gaps to fill in our organisations’ capability sets.
  • With virtual options becoming available, it is more feasible than ever to access learning opportunities.
  • It is both necessary and feasible for employers to invest in upskilling and reskilling to ensure competitive success.
  • The job of the leader in the new normal is to build resilient organisations.

 

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