Written by

Gary Snowberger

Topics

February 13, 2019

Digital Upskilling: A Modern Take on Employee Training

Companies and employees are feeling the disruptive effects of new technology, fast-changing markets, aggressive competition and broad social changes.  The pace of change is seemingly accelerating beyond the ability to keep up.    

Small business owners and employees are adopting a growth mindset and showing a desire to learn new skills. Companies want to join the ranks of the disruptors. Digital transformation is the new corporate mantra. Digital transformation is about reimagining how you bring together people, data and processes to create value for your customers and maintain a competitive advantage in a digital-first world. 1   Manufacturing, retailers and hi-tech are improving customer interactions through automation and personalization in a mobile first world. Advanced technologies for AR (augmented reality), manufacturing floor automation, data analytics, AI, IOT and cloud solutions create massive transformational opportunities but their achievement is hindered  by gaps for the necessary skilled workers and leaders.

Upskilling is at the convergence of the employee’s and business’ learning needs.  Employees need to enhance their digital skills to perform at higher levels in their current role and advance in their careers.  Companies need their workforce to obtain the skills to drive the transformation necessary to create lasting value and overcome new competitive threats in the marketplace.

Digital Upskilling

Where to get started?  A recent survey 2 of job postings shows a demand for new disruptive skills in almost all jobs.  Skills in four broad areas drive superior results by employees in current roles:

In addition to these skills, learning professionals are challenged to build new skills for their business’ innovative processes and leading-edge automation.  For example, marketers are challenged by new trends in content based, video and mobile marketing targeting audiences that appetites change daily.  Manufacturers are focused on building digital factories and monetizing connected product experiences.

The good news is 63% of working adults have taken a course or gotten additional training in the past 12 months to improve their job skills or expertise connected to career enhancement. 3    However, employees have high expectations.  They expect the best content for a topic that is available anytime and anywhere, is relevant to their experience, is engaging, is easy to discover, is connected socially and is a meaningful achievement.

Simple enough. We know what skills drive results and employees are ready to learn. But some questions need to be asked. 

Learning professionals face these questions daily. The ease of implementing upskilling is dependent on the learning culture of the organization, suitability of the existing learning ecosystem and agreement on desired outcomes. 

There are many industry enablers and tools to accelerate upskilling initiatives. The Learning & Development (L&D) organization will need to be agile and may need to accept some short-term inefficiencies to be present in the moment of need. Measuring success may be more difficult but there are a few tips on how to tie this effort to the business. However, these early steps may lay the ground work for developing the new expertise the organization will need to support crucial digital transformation initiatives.

It all begins with content

This digital skill training is generally not a competency of most businesses. Fortunately, this content is needed across professions and industries and is available from many sources. LinkedIn Learning is a source for business, basic tech and creative skills and Pluralsight is a source for intermediate to advanced technical skills.  And for custom knowledge areas that are unique to a company’s culture, technology, processes and policies, technical training may be best served through an outsourced digital upskilling partner. There are many other options.  Learning professionals can focus on curating the best available content and building deep relationships with ecosystems partners.

There are many advantages to outsourced experiences:

Outsourcing is one tool available to learning organizations.   The most common strategy to upskill employees in advanced manufacturing is to train in-house, followed by recruiting local students and offering outside vocational training 4.  Learning organizations need to create a variety of programs to meet both the employees and business’ upskilling needs.  The time is here to connect proven inhouse learning development models with the best the industry innovations.  

It is key to strike the right balance in content. Advanced skills like factory floor automation, privacy and security, new sales engagement models and machine learning require curriculums that can take the form of learning paths or MOOCs (Massive open online courses).  “The learner commitment can be significant. Project work and hands on labs may be required for jobs in hospitality or retail where new processes are being driven by digital initiatives such as IoT, Recognition Technology and mobile experiences. In these instances, online learning alone misses the mark. That is demonstrated in completion rates from 3% - 10%. Online learners have a difficult time staying committed to their learning goals without support and collaboration.”5  

Be sure to set the right expectations for learning and development, regardless of whether it’s done online or in person. Move quickly to leverage Digital Upskilling momentum and resources. Don’t overreach by applying this approach for the more transformative technologies like AI, machine learning and data science. Building expertise in these technologies is far more difficult.

The learning professional’s opportunity

Digital technologies  are changing the face of business and creating more connected learning experiences. This change is accelerating faster than the pace of transformation in organizations. 6  Efficiency and cost containment should not be the primary measure of success in L&D.  A prettier user experience, a single app and easier reporting do not move learning forward fast enough.  

New modalities, edge experiences and productivity tools are being enabled by a convergence of advanced technologies in the cloud. Position yourself to bring the best new learning and productivity innovations to your employees by prioritizing the learning solutions that drive business outcome to the top of your list.

What’s Next

90% of employee learning is self-directed.  We all search the web for content. We all share and collaborate. We participate in professional networks and communities online and consume external news feeds, blogs and internal product and reference documents. 7 Now is the time that our consumer habits will full integrate with the workplace. Our digital networks of information are valued because they are fresh and always speak to how and what’s next.  

The lessons learned here will help you take the next step toward fueling digital transformation in your organization and devoting your resources to meeting future needs.

1 Microsoft,  2 Burning Glass Technologies (Jan 2019), 3 Pew Research Center, 4 PWC Upskilling Manufacturing, , 5 Ludo Fourrage Chief Product Officer nucamp, 6 CIO magazine, 7 Center for Learning and Performance Technologies

About the Author: 

Gary is a hi-tech veteran delivering connected commercial solutions utilizing emerging technologies. Over the last 10 years he has implemented a global content management solution with connected digital learning experiences for a leading global hi-tech company.  These innovations include a rich content catalog including 3rd party providers, advanced content discovery, personalization  and social learning components.

Written by

Gary Snowberger

Topics

enterprise learning & development 2022 report