What Is Skill Development? Revamping Your Talent

Staying up-to-date on the latest trends in technology and business is vital for many reasons. It allows you to remain relevant, retain your customers, and adapt to changes quickly (and easily). It can also help you identify new opportunities and stay ahead of the competition. But what happens if your employees don’t have the skills to keep up with ever-changing trends and demands? You can equip them with those essential skills thanks to skill development.

What Is Skill Development?

Skills development is the process of improving your employees’ existing skills. It also involves giving them the tools and training they need to learn new skills, allowing them to advance in their careers and support your organization’s needs. In essence, it’s an investment in your company and your employees, helping both to grow and succeed.

Why Skills Development for Business Matters

Developing the skills of your employees comes with numerous significant benefits:

Improve Employee Retention (and Attract New Ones)

Research shows that employees want to learn. According to “The American Upskilling Study: Empowering Workers for the Jobs of Tomorrow,” 57% of U.S. workers want to update their existing skills. What’s more, 48% would consider switching jobs to do so. In essence, offering skill development opportunities can help you retain your current employees and even attract new talent to your company.

Boost Employee Engagement and Productivity

Skill development can keep motivation and engagement high, which can improve business outcomes and help your company attract new customers. It also improves employee productivity, and greater productivity can help your company achieve (and surpass) its goals more quickly.

Build Employee Confidence

As employees improve on existing skills (and learn new ones), their confidence grows. That personal growth can cultivate more positive attitudes, which affect everyone else around them. Other employees may notice and want to improve their own skills.

Stimulate Creativity and Problem-Solving

It’s not uncommon for employees to get stuck in a rut. Giving them opportunities to develop their skills can be just what they need to stimulate their creativity and problem-solving skills. They can look at problems differently and find more innovative solutions.

Enable Succession Planning

Succession planning is the process of identifying essential roles within your organization and creating plans for people to step into those roles when they become vacant. Part of that process also involves determining the vital skills employees need to succeed in those positions. Skill development would then allow you to equip employees to step into new roles more easily when the time comes.

Close Skill Gaps

With a skill development program, you first need to identify what skills your team is missing (or are underdeveloped). Then you can create an effective plan to address and close them. Your employees become more versatile and gain the skills they need to advance in their careers, and your company as a whole can address challenges and achieve goals more effectively.

Gain a Competitive Edge

These benefits of skill development can help your organization gain a competitive edge, setting you apart from other businesses similar to yours.

Tips for a Successful Skill Development Program

Now that you know some of the top benefits of skills development for your business, it’s time to create a plan or program to help your employees improve their current skills and learn new ones. Here are a few tips to help you through the process:

Know What Skills You Need

Before you can deploy a skill development program, you need to know what skills you need. Look at various roles within your company and determine what skills employees would require to succeed in them.

Take a Closer Look at Your Team’s Current Skills

Now it’s time to assess your team and determine individual employees’ strengths and weaknesses. What skills do they have? What skills are missing or underdeveloped? Surveys, skills assessment tests, and one-on-one meetings can help you collect this valuable information.

Next, compare the information you gather with the skills you identified for different roles within your company. Doing so can help you identify skill gaps and determine the best employees for skill development.

Find a Skill Development Strategy That Works

You have countless skill development strategies available at your fingertips. Here are a few to consider:

• Team building: Team building exercises offer low-stress, fun ways to identify employees’ strengths and weaknesses. It also helps to improve teamwork and various other essential skills. For instance, they foster communication, build leadership skills, and encourage creativity.
• Mentorships: With a mentorship, more experienced or tech-savvy employees work with less knowledgeable ones, teaching them the skills and competencies they need to succeed in specific roles.
• Educational materials: You can provide your employees with various training materials to help them develop their skills. These educational materials include e-learning courses, training manuals, online courses, and more.
• Job rotations: Job rotations involve placing employees in different roles to improve upon or learn specific skills. While they return to their original positions, your employees will learn the essential skills to transition into a new role more easily.

Work With an Experienced Partner

If you aren’t sure how to implement a skill development program, working with an experienced partner can be beneficial. Revature can help you upskill and reskill your existing workforce, helping your employees improve themselves and your company.

If Necessary, Hire New Talent

Sometimes, you need to hire a new employee, and that’s OK. Again, Revature is here to help, this time with our hire-train-deploy model. Revature hires fresh, quality talent and trains them to your specifications and needs. After training and real-world experience, they’re ready to start working with your team as soon as they arrive. Revature helps develop the types of employees that will thrive in your organization and help it grow.

Satisfy the Needs of Your Business and Your Employees With Skill Development

Skill development is a win-win for your company and your employees. By giving your employees the tools and training they need to improve upon and expand their skill sets, they can easily advance within their careers. At the same time, these employees are more productive and engaged, which can help your company thrive and grow.

Would you like to learn more about our upskilling program or hire-train-deploy model? Visit Revature today!