Some of the biggest players in the United States are investing more in their employees. For example, Verizon provides free learning opportunities for their employees through their upskilling program called ‘Skill Forward.’ Meanwhile, Google works with several organizations like Year Up for upskilling programs that target at least 20,000 employees. Outside tech and telecommunications, J.P. Morgan even shared that $350 million will be allocated for upskilling.
J.P. Morgan’s CEO even said, “The new world of work is about skills, not necessarily degrees.”
But skills are difficult to acquire considering that work hours take so much of an employee’s day. Fortunately, there are companies that support their employees’ growth as they recognize the value in it. If you’re curious about what these companies are getting from said investments, this article explains why you should upskill and reskill your employees.
Future-proofs the workforce
The primary goal of upskilling and reskilling is to improve employees’ skills for their current job or for other roles. LHH notes how upskilling and reskilling can help bridge the skills gap, allowing employees to be more agile or flexible when they graduate from training. With employees learning how to constantly communicate with other teams and adapt to change, the company can anticipate changes, have more people around when they need to, and be risk-averse to crises.
Formal training for your employees also cuts down on the time employees have to spend on a task that requires specific skills. With training programs, your employees gain the knowledge and tools they could use to streamline tasks and make processes more efficient. In turn, they can focus more time on bigger projects.
Lastly, as they’ve learned skills through formal training, employees will also make fewer mistakes. They deliver quality outputs while saving time to ideate, innovate, and collaborate for the company’s bigger projects.
Decreases employee turnover rate
Losing an employee and looking for a replacement costs a company a lot of money. The estimated yearly costs for employee turnover are around $1 trillion in the United States — this does not include the cost of resources exhausted in the hiring process. Upskilling and reskilling can keep your best employees from leaving and save you more money.
If you’re curious as to why, a report from McKinsey & Company found that a major reason why employees resign is due to the company’s lack of proactive support in their growth. Providing training programs and learning opportunities empower employees and keep them from resigning. Their morale increases especially because they feel valued by an organization that chooses to invest in their potential with upskilling and reskilling.
Improves company image
Investing in human development also improves the company’s reputation. Enriching employee training programs is one way of reinforcing company branding. CRM platform Hubspot even claims that the publicity of brand-positive programs like training attract top professionals in the industry. These individuals are fueled by their growth mindset and see your company as an organization that would help them grow. Such is the principle behind companies like Meta who created programs (such as ‘Return to Work’), to recruit skilled professionals who had to take time off work.
Moreover, employees, themselves, are valuable to companies. Beyond their work output, they possess data and experiences that benefit a company in many ways. Productivity, knowledge base, and growth opportunities, to name a few—all of which help the company gain an edge over its competition.
How your company moves forward greatly depends on your employees and their capacity for change. Though it takes time to reap the rewards of upskilling and reskilling, the exponential growth of the organization’s different facets makes it worth the wait and investment.
