Your talents are waiting to evolve! How can you encourage your employees to upgrade their skills?

It's in every company's interest to ensure that their relationship with their employees lasts over time. Keeping your employees means keeping all their expertise within your company... and avoiding costly recruitment!

It's important to support them as they develop their skills, so that they feel more committed to the organization's project over the long term. The employer, for his part, also reaps the benefits: he has access to human resources with cutting-edge skills.

But what exactly is the company's role in this work, and how can it help its employees to evolve?

Here's a look at the definition, methods and tips for raising your teams to success!

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Up-skilling: the definition

Up-skilling refers to the process by which an employee acquires new qualifications, with the aim of :

• improve their day-to-day performance ;
• be entrusted with new functions.

☝️Il is therefore often a prerequisite for advancement within the company, and thus fosters job satisfaction.

Through daily practice, monitoring and exchanges with colleagues, employees are constantly expanding their knowledge. However, the increase in skills can be largely taken care of by the employer, who then associates it with training and integrates it into its GPEC approach.

💡 Note: skills upgrading concerns both :

• hard skills, i.e. technical and specific know-how (computer programming, accounting, project management, mastery of specific software, etc.) ;
• soft skills, which are more concerned with behavioral aptitudes (communication, creativity, leadership, empathy, etc.).

The benefits of upgrading skills

For employees

Skills upgrading offers employees the chance to progress within the company, as new career opportunities present themselves. Not to mention that the positions they can fill thanks to their new qualifications are often better paid 🤑.

What's more, by seeing that their employer is invested in their development, employees feel more committed and invested.

In short, upskilling is a clear lever for well-being at work.

For the company

The company, for its part, can count on more efficient employees.

Skills upgrading also guarantees :

• rapidly acquire the know-how needed to remain competitive and innovative;
• without the need for costly and time-consuming recruitment.

👉 It's impossible not to think of the need to upgrade skills in new technologies, which many employees still lack. Thanks to levers such as training, organizations are helping their staff to progress in this area, to better face the reality of the marketplace.

💡 Good to know: skills upgrading is part of the objectives of the Avenir Professionnel law. It stipulates that employers are obliged to set up actions in this direction, including training and skills assessments.

There are 6 steps to help you develop your skills?

Step 1: Make skills development part of an ongoing process

First of all, it's important to remember that an effective skills enhancement process is not a one-off job for which HR only gets involved a few times a year, at the time of the annual appraisal, for example.

And with good reason: companies need to remain agile if they are to adapt quickly to the constant changes in the world of work!

👉 So you need to ensure continuous monitoring of skills development, not least through regular feedback. In this way, you can quickly detect if an employee needs to broaden his or her field of knowledge.

Step 2: Assess skills needs within the company

This involves assessing the company's needs and those of its employees in parallel, with a view to correlating them.

On the employee side

Define a career plan with them, taking into account not only their aspirations but also their current qualifications. In fact, it's best to capitalize on their strengths (starting from a solid base) to accelerate their skills development.

We also advise you to carry out skills assessments, a good way of identifying employees' weak points and the areas for improvement that go with them.

On the company side

The first thing to do: get in touch with management! That's the only way to find out what the company's future strategy is, and to identify the skills needed to implement it, as well as any shortcomings.

But that's not all! To stay competitive, you need to anticipate future needs arising from changes in your sector (technological, societal, regulatory, etc.).

Step 3: Set the right objectives

If you think about it, skills development is a lifelong process.

However, in the context of a company project, it's important to clearly define the development objectives to be achieved by each employee.

This will not only ensure the success of the process (we know where we're going), but also, and above all, ensure perfect alignment with the company's needs.

☝️ Objectives, yes, but SMART objectives please, i.e. both :

• Specific,
• Measurable,
• Attainable,
• Realistic,
• Time-defined.

Step 4: Implement the skills development plan

It's time for the company to design a plan in line with the predefined objectives.

💡 To help you, use a skills development chart that lists:

• the company's needs ;
• the various resources/actions to be mobilized to meet them (training in particular);
• the duration of these actions.

👉 Example of a skills enhancement plan :

Step 5: Encourage other levers

Training is not the only way to help your employees grow. We even advise you to encourage other levers, in particular :

• sharing of experience and practices between employees ;
• mentoring or coaching programs;
• the development of specific missions to acquire new skills in a given context;
• providing resources (e.g. webinars).

Step 6: Monitor and adjust your skills development plan

It's time to check whether the predefined objectives have been achieved. But how do you evaluate your skills development?

You can do this in a number of ways: regularly review the performance associated with a position, run technical tests to concretely measure progress, etc.

👉 We also advise you to gather feedback from employees. This method generates a double benefit:

• employees have the opportunity to reflect on their progress and needs ;
• on your side, you detect areas for improvement in your skills enhancement approach.

💡 Good to know: the whole process of upgrading skills can be greatly facilitated by the use of software, capable of automating many of the actions. What's more, they centralize all the necessary data.

For example, Skeely's GPEC solution enables you to assess your employees' skills, thanks to a global mapping, and then plan the actions to be deployed to remedy any shortcomings. It also includes functions dedicated to setting up and monitoring personalized training plans.

7 tips to improve the skills development process

1. Communicate sufficiently. Appropriate communication helps to give meaning to skills upgrading, and to explain to employees why the company needs them to expand their knowledge of a particular subject. It's the key to gaining their trust!
   
   
2. Foster a culture of continuous learning. Work to create an environment where development is encouraged and valued by all levels of the organization.
   
   
3. Provide the necessary funding. Upgrading an employee's skills generates costs. Hence the importance of securing management support for such projects.
   
   
4. Reward employees. While we're on the subject of money... let's face it, one of the main reasons why an employee wants to progress in his or her career is the prospect of seeing his or her salary rise!
   
   
5. Adapt training to individual learning styles. Recognize that every employee is unique. So, if possible, offer a variety of training options to suit all profiles.
   
   
6. Follow industry trends. In other words, stay abreast of changes in the industry to adapt development programs accordingly.
   
   
7. Lead by example! Even in HR and management, there are always new things to learn. So be ready to learn as soon as you need to.

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Skills enhancement in a nutshell

Combined with GPEC, skills upgrading is essential for any company wishing to stay in the race. Especially as your competitors won't be waiting for you! What's more, it's an excellent way of securing the loyalty of your talent, through the promise of career prospects.

But for skills upgrading to work, it needs to be part of an ongoing, structured process. The good news is that this work is greatly facilitated by the use of dedicated software, which saves HR time and reduces the risk of oversights.

Finally, we advise you to develop an environment conducive to exchanges, even informal ones. You always learn from others... even in a simple conversation at the coffee machine 😉.