Skill building
Build your skills in the workplace!
It is essential for a business to develop skill building strategies in order to stay competitive, current and maintain its key employees.
What Makes Skill Building Important?
With the constant change in working environments it becomes more and more important for employees to develop their skill set. Keep in mind that employees and organizations can both benefit from skill building as it increases engagement and productivity. It has been observed that when companies cannot provide enough opportunities for growth to their employees they tend to have lower engagement and the business strangles to maintain its top performers. Businesses that help their staff, gain competitive advantage and the necessary skills by implementing skill building activities. The whole process starts by identifying the person’s skill set and skill gaps. Furthermore, it costs more to hire someone new than invest in the right training program for your existing employees.
important skills
- Soft Skills
In order to perform better in a diverse working environment employees should have and enhance their soft skills which include collaboration, creativity, adaptability and emotional intelligence.
- Technology
Probably one of the most important assets in today’s workplace is technology, with more and more companies implementing new tools and staying up to date with the latest trends. With tech changing faster than before, companies want to find or train employees who have the newest tech skills such as ux design, data engineering, salesforce, AI and robotics.
- Team Communication
There is nothing more essential in a workplace than members with team spirit and collaboration. Communication amongst colleagues and departments is the key to a pleasant, interactive and productive work environment.
Benefits from Skill Building
- Improvement
- Productivity
- Engagement
- Staff Development
Methods To Develop Employees Skills
- Coaching and Mentoring
Mentor employees by having career based discussions and let them get interested about high skilled jobs. Assign group projects and monitor their work improvements or lack of; encourage team interaction and discussions to create a diverse work environment. Evaluate their interests and encourage their participation in multiple job roles, if possible.
- Training
An ongoing learning process can be essential for your employees long term engagement to the company and their productivity. This can be accomplished either by a workshop or a conference, certification programs (online training programs can be really helpful),or by breaking down any departmental barriers and educating employees on different aspects of the several departments. It could be helpful if your company uses a learning management system(LMS) in order to monitor training content and show it to your employees and indicate the success ratio of the training program. Overall, training can help your employees develop new skills and improve their existing ones, you can also integrate job rotation to figure out if someone can perform other tasks too.
- Performance Review
Performance review is crucial when we want to identify the weaknesses and strengths in an employee’s performance. Organizing a monthly meeting to discuss their progress in the company is important because the staff can understand if their efforts produced any good results and where there is a need for improvement. Organizations can then use all this information they gathered and implement the right skill building activities for its employees.
- Blended Learning Approach
Investing in blended learning can be beneficial for a company, as it is an advanced learning method that combines traditional methods with technological ones. It provides employees with flexibility as they can learn at any time and any place at their own pace, they can also benefit from both virtual learning and from traditional practices as well. For companies blended learning is an asset as they cut down costs and materials associated with face to face learning. They can use webinars and other online training methods for better results and with implementing LMS they can make the learning process more efficient.
- Address skill gaps
Organizations must assess their employees current skills, determine which skills to build and improve, through the right methods and then bridge the skills gaps. Companies use skill gap analysis to determine the existing and required skill levels. Managers can fill the gap with training and reskilling, or/and with new hires.
- Feedback
Give constructive feedback to your employees, acknowledge their efforts and encourage them to provide suggestions. Arrange a monthly feedback form and one to one discussion about areas of improvement, review practices, and understand them better. Alongside conducting performance review, companies are able to build their employees skills and fill the gaps that might occur.
- Use of tech
Companies can use technologies like gamification, augmented reality and virtual reality into their training programs so that employees can stay interested, minimize the time they need in order to learn and even develop their soft skills. Furthermore integrating games in the learning process can make the online training more fun, easy to comprehend, help employees learn faster and increase their productivity.
Invest in skill building
When investing in your workers you help them feel needed in the workplace, improve their productivity and help them gain the necessary skill set that aligns with the company’s future plans. It is essential for a business to develop skill building strategies in order to stay competitive, current and maintain its key employees.
To wrap up, when a company invests in their staff they seem to engage more and they are more likely to stay in the long run as they see an effort considering their training, learning and their future in the company.
