11 Dec Why Skilling and Re-Skilling are Essential?

“Without sharpening your weapon; standing on the battlefield would not increase your chance of winning.”

I came across this while browsing online and it stuck with me. If you are a working professional, you would know how quickly the landscape of the corporate world and other workplaces are transforming these days. In the past, it was all about academic degrees. But nowadays, more and more employers are looking for skillful candidates. Almost all leading companies have started approaching the “learn from the past, perform at present, and think about the future” approach. Most companies seek ways to plug the gaps in the skill sets of the employees.

Whether you talk about getting a job or maintaining it for a long time, it boils down to one’s adaptability and surviving skills. Skilling, where you learn something new and re-skilling, where you improve your existing capabilities, have emerged as two successful strategies in this regard. Therefore, business organizations have started paying attention to the existing skill sets in employees. The managers and supervisors of major companies look for ways to bring about an improvement in the intelligence of their staff.

Why should you upskill or reskill?

According to an estimate, almost 80% of the overall jobs necessitate the use of digital technology. By 2020, this figure is all set to go above 90%. As a result, employees who hold various job roles in offices are required to know how to operate computers and other digital devices. The current scenario of the business world is characterized by an intense competition across the board in all the niches. Together with talent, your technical knowledge can make a big difference to the productivity of your company.

Over the last few years, training has emerged as one of the core aspects of the majority of jobs. Regardless of the job role that you have landed based on your academic education, chances are you must have undergone training. Do you believe your training session is over just because you have successfully sat in a cubicle? If yes, then think again. Most employers think otherwise.

In the pursuit of heightening productivity, most companies have started allocating a separate budget for employee training programs. This is because they count the shortage or lack of skills as one of the major roadblocks in the path of higher output.

Every business owner wants to see higher profit margins. Higher output is one of the core elements of business processes that can help them achieve this objective. Thus, both upskilling and re-skilling are the vital elements of a business. On the part of employees, it is necessary to embrace them as an important aspect of their professional career to drive their performance graph a notch above all the time.

The is the need of the hour

“The more we give importance to skill development, the more competent will be our youth.”-Narendra Modi

New and exciting job roles are coming to the fore day by day. Due to the growing role of artificial intelligence, machine learning is taken up the majority of common job roles that needed manual effort. The growing role of these two aspects in the scheme of things in various business activities has turned most jobs redundant. This has left the employees of the organizations with two choices: either learn new skills to fit into the newer job roles or lose relevance.

Switching over to a new job role doesn’t only mean dealing with a new set of responsibilities. It also means handling various new tools. In other words, one has to be digitally competent plus promote one’s efficiency in more than one job role to remain valuable in the current time.

Evolving workforce

“You can cut down a tree with a hammer, but it takes about 30 days. If you trade the hammer for an ax, you can cut it down in about 30 minutes. The difference between 30 days and 30 minutes is skills.”-Jim Rohn

You must have heard it from your parents at the time of your schooling that good marks or grades can help enhance your career prospects. While this idea may not have become obsolete, it has lost a larger part of its relevance. Why? The reason is simple: you also need skills along with your academic degree to impress or convince your employer to provide you with a high-salaried job.

If you are a youngster who is looking for ways to land a lucrative job, you need to be a little different from others. Remember that there are several other candidates like you who are waiting in the wings with an academic degree just like you. At the time of an interview, the hiring manager of your would-be employer would look for how you can add value to their business. If you display a decent level of skills as a starter for the job that you are applying for, along with the willingness to learn, you are more likely to get selected. In your employment, your desire to learn something new will make you a curious learner and propel you onto the trajectory of success with new opportunities.

As you keep offering a wider range of solutions, you can be an asset to your organization. This will not only enhance your chances of holding onto a job role but also significantly improve your chances of getting an increment or a promotion. Plus, you will also stay a step ahead to achieve all your career objectives as a flag bearer of the workforce to which you belong. Taking part in upskilling and reskilling can help you accomplish these career missions with flying colors.

Success of your business organization

“Success is no longer about changing strategies more often, but having the agility to execute multiple strategies concurrently. And success requires CEOs to develop the right leadership capabilities, workforce skills, and corporate cultures to support digital transformation.”- Pierre Nanterme.

Among other things, plugging the gap in the skill level of employees has become a necessity in the changing landscape of business competition. A company with a bunch of skillful professionals can think about diversifying its workforce. Have you ever come across an employee training program in your company wherein you have been offered training for a new job role? Chances are you must have come across such a situation at least once on your professional career so far.

You may have wondered why your company considered you as the frontline option when it had the choice to hire someone with the skills to better handle the new job requirements. You were right on your part in thinking so. Your employer was not wrong either. From the standpoint of a company, it is much cheaper to train an existing staff member for a new job role than hiring someone with work experience. In the former case, your employer would give you an increment, whereas your employer would need to offer a higher salary package if they thought about hiring an experienced candidate. Thus, upskilling and reskilling can help cut down the costs by a huge margin.

Final thoughts

Whether you are already into a job or planning to join one, embracing the concept of upskilling and reskilling can be an ingenious strategy to advance your career goals. Opportunities will keep knocking your door but as an employee, you always need to be on the look for it.

Whenever you get a chance to improve your skill or revisit a skill that you have already learned, you should grab it at will with both the hands for the aforementioned reasons. Doing so will help take your performance graph or career prospects a notch and will eventually steer you through to success.