Reskilling should not be confused with upskilling – but both are policies that businesses should have in place for their employees to pursue. Let’s have a look at the reskilling revolution, what it is, why you need to prepare for it and how to prepare your workforce for the future.
What is Reskilling?
Reskilling and upskilling should be parts of every business, but they are not the same thing at all. Upskilling is when an employee with a certain qualification or skillset is offered further training in that same area of speciality: for example, a bookkeeper being trained up towards accountancy qualifications. Reskilling would be training that employee in an entirely new job, but hopefully one that uses the transferrable skills that they have: so, the bookkeeper of the previous example being put in charge of warehouse inventory, for example, or helping to computerise records because they are skilled at entering the accounts information into a complicated software programmer.
Why Do Employees Need to be Reskilled?
The business world is changing at an astounding rate of knots – just ask Eagle headhunter recruitment agency! – and most children going into high school this year will emerge into a job market that is all but unrecognisable to those currently in the workforce. Just as the industrial revolution swept aside hand-crafted furniture, hand-sewn garments and the need for a crew of labourers to prepare and sow farmer’s fields so too will the ongoing technological revolution transform the way we work. It can already be seen with the ability to work remotely from coffeeshops, home offices or even the beach – something entirely unthinkable a couple of decades ago. Therefore offering your employees the opportunity to stay up to date with the latest advances in technology and industry-related innovations is a great way to make sure that your company rides the wave of change rather than being capsized through not having the skills or having adapted quickly enough to new ways of working.
What Will the Future Look Like?
As the business world becomes ever more automated, the need for human employees will not necessarily reduce. Instead, the people who currently pack online orders will perhaps be trained to oversee a bank of robotic packers, for example. And there is no reason why this automation of work will not proceed up the management ladder: there are swathes of processes which can be automated. These include the processing of time cards and timesheets, checking that processes are completed correctly, and even stock-keeping, inventory and reordering can all be performed by technology. Even pricing can be automated, with a set profit margin programmed into the stock inventory. But again, just as the ‘paperless office’ actually resulted in entirely new lots of paperwork becoming necessary, this does not mean that human employees will be cast aside. Instead, new needs will arise – needs that cannot yet be described as we don’t know what they will be – that will need human input.
Preparing your business for the future – whatever it looks like – means preparing your employees for the future. If you do this promptly, responding quickly to trends and innovations, your business will thrive and succeed – because your reskilled employees will be able to cope with whatever comes their way.
