Reskilling and Upskilling: Challenges in the World of Work Today
The time it takes for a skill to become half as valuable has decreased from 10 to five years.
In this article I seek to bring a simple understanding of the concepts of Reskilling and Upskilling and challenges in the world of work today. If you know them, you will connect with the story and surely you will be able to deepen in some aspects. If you don't know about it, I sincerely hope you can start conversations about it in your organization, your team and that you start to prepare yourself for it.
And to give you an applied focus to your reading, through this article I will give you distinctions and some suggestions of steps to take so that you can start landing this knowledge.
GLOBAL CONTEXT: Challenges in the World of Work Today
Some data given by the World Economic Forum projects that, by 2025, about 85 million jobs could change completely due to a replacement of humans by "machines".
These figures are not indifferent to anyone. For those who remain in their same jobs, they will face a substantial change in the basic skills needed to perform. It is estimated that the change in these skills will be around 40%. This number emphasizes the need to be vigilant, and significantly triggers a sense of urgency in organizations regarding their training and continuous learning challenges.
At the same time, 97 million new jobs are projected to be created, driven by technological advances and digital transformation. In other words, jobs and tasks that we do not know are appearing. This phenomenon inevitably leads us to think and ask ourselves if we will have these new professionals and/or technicians, will they be trained today by universities and technical institutes?
Sounds apocalyptic, doesn't it?
I share this "apocalyptic" feeling with you so that we can connect especially with those who might currently feel intensely concerned about all these changes. Perhaps you yourself today have concerns about this because you are part of an HR area that feels it cannot prepare people with the speed required to face new challenges; or you are part of a technology area that is having difficulty finding and retaining talent; or you lead an operational area that will have to deal with relevant restructurings given the digital transformation; or even you lead an organization and visualize the difficulties in facing an increasingly uncertain future.
For all of the above, and with major change looming in 2025, the time to start is now.
INITIAL DEFINITIONS: What is Reskilling and Upskilling?
These concepts are not new, in fact the first publication I read on the subject was in 2009. However, it is only recently that it has been heard with force, mainly in industries that are already experiencing the impact of these changes.
RESKILLING - refers to learning new skills for a new similar job. It therefore considers a rather linear development where the person starts with existing skills and refines them.
UPSKILLING - refers to learning the current tasks more deeply. That is, a new job that requires a more highly developed skill set. This type of development considers preparing employees to move into newly created roles as the job evolves.
And you will also hear concepts related to these, such as Team Skilling or Skill Building.
INITIAL SUGGESTIONS: 4 axes to consider to face this challenge.
To successfully face this challenge, I would like to invite you to look at 4 work axes.
Surely you cannot "take care of all of them", therefore, I suggest that you look for action areas where you can start from acting or influencing, in order to start working on these axes in your organization. And if you are already working on them, wonderful!
Following some research, it is possible to find that the following 4 axes are key to face the proposed scenario.
Invest in people as a valuable asset, not see them as a liability.
This statement reinforces that people continue to be our competitive advantage when facing complex scenarios. In economic crisis scenarios, decisions are often made losing sight of people and thinking that investing in them is the first expense to be reduced. Pay attention, prioritize, and define unassailable spaces with respect to investments that should not be eliminated in this area.
2. Talent management, attraction, retention, broad view of development.
Today it is unthinkable not to have at least a basic talent management strategy. Regardless of the size of your organization, define an initial strategy and plan. Defining a strategy and plan does not necessarily require a lot of resources, don't let that limiting belief lead you to abandon this axis. If there is one thing I can suggest as part of the process, involve key stakeholders in these definitions so that the responsibility for this area is never seen as exclusive to dedicated areas.
3. A culture of continuous learning that does not depend on specific business objectives or professional development.
This third axis raises the need to always look at the organization as a living and open system that requires the development of new capabilities that are constantly being incorporated into the environment. Continuous learning as a capability does not rely on large investments, but rather places at the center key values to be reinforced in our culture. The most basic of these is: valuing error and dedicating time to learning. Small steps to generate practices oriented to collect learning from successful and unsuccessful cases as part of everyday life, is a central start.
4. Ecosystem of deep and sustained collaboration with government and education providers.
This axis is one of the most complex because it is beyond the scope of individual action. However, it is increasingly common to see links between the private sector and universities and professional institutes focused on preparing professionals and technicians for future jobs. I suggest you to look for information, check if there are any initiatives in this regard at the country level. It is highly probable that you will find that initiatives of value for your organization are being developed in priority economic areas. For example, in Chile for more than 10 years there has been an ecosystem work to address changes in the mining industry. If not, raise your sense of urgency in this regard.
Developing organizational capabilities to face new challenges such as those mentioned in upskilling and reskilling brings us back once again to the relevance of orchestrating change processes. Digital Transformation or Agile Transformation or whatever Transformation, remember, the process will fail if we are not able to facilitate change from the people.