Upskilling and Reskilling: How to address the “skills gap” among your collaborators

Due to the constant evolution of the world and the digital revolution that is challenging many companies, fields such as Big Data and AI have become innovative solutions for all organizations.

However, not all collaborators know how to work with these technologies. So should we replace staff? The answer is simple: no. With the following strategies, you can address the skills gap among your employees and help them in their professional development.

What does upskilling and reskilling mean?

Upskilling and reskilling are two techniques that can help people advance in their career fields or even start a new one.

Upskilling

Upskilling means improvement in Spanish and involves learning new skills or improving existing ones. This involves increasing knowledge, acquiring leadership skills, learning new technologies, among others.

The main objective of upskilling is to advance one’s career or stay updated in the workplace. For example:

• A sales representative attending a workshop on negotiation skills.
• A software developer learning a new programming language or framework.

Upskilling allows you to improve and advance in your current profession, and surpass your previous achievements.

Reskilling

Reskilling, also known as retraining, involves learning completely new skills that are different from your current area of ​​work. In many cases, this involves changing careers or transitioning to a new industry.

It is important to note that when learning a completely new topic, it requires investing more time and resources compared to upskilling.

What are digital badges and their examples of use?

Why should they be implemented?

Personal growth is one of the main reasons why people seek training or update their skills. Other common motivations include:

• Stay up to date in your work field.
• Advance your career.
• Increase revenue.
• Change profession.

However, many times collaborators do not have the necessary support to apply these techniques. In the case of companies, it is important for leaders to observe their employees and identify their real needs.

By doing so, you will not only be helping your employees, but you will also be closing the skills gaps needed to perform specific activities.

What is known as the skills gap?

The skills gap refers to the difference between what a company needs and the actual skills its employees have. This gap occurs when an employee is assigned to a task that he does not understand or for which he does not have the necessary skills.

The Three Types of Gaps and How to Address Them Although there are more than three types of skills gaps that can arise in an organization, the most common are:

• Knowledge gap: Occurs when staff do not have the information necessary to do their jobs.
• Skills gap: Occurs when staff know their job, but do not have the skills necessary to carry it out.
• Performance gap: occurs when employees lack motivation or reason to achieve the company’s objectives.

It might interest you: How digital credentials add value to organizations

Recognizing these gaps is easy, but the difficult part is knowing how to address them. As advice, you can start with:

• Establish strategies to close the skills gap. You can implement a recognition program based on the certification of achievements and competencies of your collaborators.
• Use technology to help identify and address individual gaps.
• Carry out continuous evaluations that help obtain an analysis of existing needs.

Finally, it is important to apply upskilling or reskilling according to the results of each strategy or evaluation.

How to take advantage of upskilling and reskilling strategies

The most important thing to start with is to define what skills you want to develop in your collaborators and how the process of acquiring these new skills will be carried out.

But the strategy doesn’t end there, it’s just beginning. You must ensure that your teams effectively start and complete their training. How to achieve it? Through certification and recognition with Digital Badges.

Digital Badges allow you to promote and motivate the completion of training, granting an innovative and secure certification when your collaborators achieve the objectives. Additionally, they can showcase their newfound knowledge on their social media profiles.

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