General Assembly Blog

Digital transformation has created opportunities and challenges for corporate leaders. Ways of doing business have changed dramatically. Today, consumers want to engage and transact with brands digitally, which has led to massive investment in technology. Yet the workforce’s skills have not kept up at the same pace, leaving businesses playing catch up as they race to hire the right talent to meet consumers’ demand for modern experiences.

According to Statista, global investment in digital transformation is expected to nearly double from $1.8 trillion in 2022 to $2.8 trillion in 2025, which will only serve to widen this skills gap. As companies continue to struggle to find the right technical talent from external sources, they are increasingly turning to upskilling their existing workforces to fill needed roles.

What is upskilling?

Upskilling is when an employee learns new skills that enable them to advance in their career. For example, an individual contributor might learn data skills so they can be promoted into a management role. Upskilling shouldn’t be confused with reskilling, in which an employee learns new skills that enable them to transition into an entirely different role.

When it comes to digital transformation, upskilling is a powerful tool that will help your business realize the full potential of its technology investments. According to the World Economic Forum, 54% of all employees require significant upskilling. However, for many businesses, upskilling strategies are missing the mark. Often, this is because they make the mistake of rolling out large libraries of asynchronous learning without a road map or context, putting the onus on their employees to figure it out on their own.

Like all investments, upskilling must be thoughtful and strategic. Business leaders should strive to tie upskilling initiatives to the company’s strategic objectives and goals. For example, if your organization is making a major push to become more data-driven, upskilling can help employees gain the data skills they need to advance this goal. If your company is looking to increase diversity in management, upskilling programs can help foster talent from different backgrounds. Tying upskilling to specific tools your business intends to leverage can be another way to ensure learning efforts support broader organizational goals.

What are the benefits of upskilling?

1. Upskilling helps you access key skills from your existing employees.

Skills gaps pose a direct threat to companies’ ability to innovate and remain competitive. According to one survey from PwC, 55% of CEOs concerned about skills gaps identified being unable to innovate effectively as a potential impact. Other potential impacts included negative effects on quality standards and customer experience, the inability to pursue market opportunities and canceled or delayed key strategic initiatives.

For example, BNP Paribas has an overall goal of being a tech-driven company, and they began working with General Assembly in 2018 to create their upskilling program. According to Chief Digital & Acceleration Officer Nathalie Doré, people are the company’s most important assets. So, as the leader in creditor insurance, BNP Paribas knew building a culture of continuous learning for its 8,000 global employees would be key to retaining its competitive edge. The company has already trained more than 900 unique participants from all over the world and throughout the business, from operations to finance, accounting, and marketing and communications.

Upskilling is more than a learning and development benefit for employees—it’s an essential tactic that will support your business’s long-term strategy and future ability to grow and remain competitive.

2. It improves employee satisfaction and retention.

As The Great Resignation continues, employee engagement and retention have become major focuses for corporate leadership. With Gen Z and Millennial employees more likely to rank “lack of career progress” among their top reasons for leaving a job, upskilling is one way to demonstrate to your employees that you are invested in them and their career growth. As Doré from BNP Paribas put it, “knowing they can learn new skills without having to leave their job encourages people to think differently about what they can do in the company and what their career path could be.”

While some leaders may fear that training workers in more advanced skills could lead them to seek employment elsewhere, the data shows the opposite to be true. Companies who invest in developing in-house talent see an incredible boost in employee engagement and loyalty. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton invested in reskilling and upskilling 5,000 workers across more than 80 locations, which drove 11% growth in employee job satisfaction and retention. Similarly, a LinkedIn study found that employees at organizations with internal mobility programs that upskill, reskill and invest in existing employee bases stay at their companies nearly 2x longer.

3. It helps attract new, diverse talent.

Not only will upskilling improve retention of your current workforce, but it will also help you attract new talent. Today’s candidates are spoiled for choice when it comes to companies hiring, and for many, picking an employer that will offer opportunities for continued learning and growth is paramount. According to one study, 83% of office workers wish their employer would provide more upskilling opportunities.

As more candidates value diversity and companies who put action behind diversity pledges, upskilling is also a way to demonstrate measurable investment in bringing diverse talent into more technical and leadership positions.

Additionally, when you have a robust upskilling strategy in place, you can stop competing for the most expensive candidates and instead hire for potential. If less qualified candidates have the foundational skills and motivation to learn, they’ll thrive at an organization that has the infrastructure in place to evolve their skills.

Close your skills gap with General Assembly

Upskilling is key to unlocking your employees’ potential, but not all upskilling programs are created equal. It’s tempting to roll out a large library of content for employees to start learning at their own pace, but without tying learning to business goals or being clear about objectives, it’s rarely effective.

We’ve worked with some of today’s top enterprises, like Macy’s and Sage AI, to successfully upskill their employees and we’d love to help you, too.

If you’re interested in working with us on
your upskilling strategy, get in touch.

A successful talent development strategy is critical for businesses to remain competitive and bridge the skills gaps within their workforces. Today, the rapid pace of technology development and digital transformation has forced companies to be more nimble and creative with talent development. Gone are the days where learning and development consisted primarily of soft skills training, like people management and conflict resolution. Today, talent development teams must also ensure their workforce has the skills needed to compete in the digital economy. 

In the US alone, corporations spend nearly $180 billion annually on formal training programs. Yet, somehow, businesses still face a global talent shortage. Talent development programs can help address this by unleashing the full potential of a company’s existing workforce. 

This isn’t something businesses can think about in a silo. According to IBM, 120 million workers in the world’s largest economies may need to be retrained due to automation. If companies don’t plan for the future with innovative approaches to talent development, mass displacement of workers could occur—with serious economic ramifications. 

Despite budget cutbacks and headlines warning of Big Tech’s hiring slowdown, overall employer demand for technical skills is still on the rise and projected to grow, with job postings across technical sectors still twice as high than any other fields.

But many workers are struggling to access the opportunities that put these in-demand jobs within reach. COVID-19 has driven the skills gap even wider, with nearly six in 10 U.S. workers expressing that a lack of skills prevented them from applying for a job they wanted in the last two years and countless employers complaining of a labor shortage. Automation and digitization are accelerating, and millions of low wage workers are at risk for displacement.

Resolving the global training deficit is a massive and complex undertaking – and while significant, meaningful work is underway, it cannot be accomplished without wide-scale public and private sector collaboration. As rising inflation wears away personal disposable income, and the college debt crisis reaches new heights, it’s clear the onus cannot be on individual workers to bankroll solutions. Instead, for an industry known for cutting edge innovation, a tried and true model is emerging as an effective tool: apprenticeships.

When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), top global businesses are struggling to bridge the gap between aspirations and actions. They know building a truly inclusive work culture is essential when it comes to social expectations, political trends, and board and shareholder demands. But business leaders also understand the direct correlation between a strong DEI program and attracting–to retain–top diverse talent. So, many businesses have stated their goals and started working toward them. They have established employee resource groups. They have appointed an array of DEI executives. They have made public pledges to elevate diverse employees to the C-Suite level. They have set a timeline for building a more diverse workforce. In short, they have taken the first–and very necessary–steps.

While society is committed to advancing DEI in the workplace, logic and statistics show there is still much work to do–from ensuring better diverse representation to more equitable compensation. Only 4% of companies employ a female chair and a meager 3.2% of executive or senior-level managers at Fortune 500 companies are Black. When you dig into pay disparities, the statistics are even more disconcerting. For every dollar a white male employee makes, Black employees make 62 cents, and Latina employees just 54 cents. The facts, while stark, are hardly surprising. Businesses have been talking about building a more diverse workforce for years, but–for the most part–they have been stuck in neutral, spinning their well-intentioned wheels.