How Upskilling and Reskilling Saves Your Company Money
Technological advancements are reducing labor costs and getting more done in less time. But now many businesses need fewer employees. Upskill and reskill obsolete employees to retain key workers and maintain a future-ready org.
Technological advancements like automation, AI, and deep learning are helping companies reduce labor costs. More is getting done in less time. There are significant time savings, greater process efficiency, and cost reduction.
But, as a side effect, your business may need fewer employees to perform the same work. Efficiency has improved, and there aren’t enough tasks to go around.
Some employees’ skillsets have become outdated and are not up to par with the current level of technology in the company or the world.
So what to do with the workers that have become obsolete, through no fault of their own? Will you lay off loyal employees with obsolete talents and hire new employees with updated skills?
While it is feasible to switch out current staff with new ones that have the skills you desire, it is not the most effective. Finding and hiring people is time-consuming, effort-intensive, and costly.
Upskilling and reskilling obsolete employees, on the other hand, can be a great alternative.
What Is Upskilling and Reskilling?
First, let’s get some definitions out of the way.
Upskilling is the process of adding to an existing skill set within a current role (e.g., training a currently employed software engineer in a new programming language).
Reskilling is the process of learning new skills needed to do an entirely different job (e.g., switching from graphic design to software development).
As an enterprise, you must constantly update your offerings to stay relevant and gain a competitive edge. Keeping your employee’s training up-to-date and on par with current market offerings is an essential part of the process.
Approximately 90% of managers and executives who participated in a McKinsey survey1 agreed their organizations either already faced a skills gap or expected gaps by 2024. As per the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 20202, by 2024, approximately 40% of workers will require up to six months of reskilling to maintain their current employment.
Retraining employees can prepare them for future roles, help streamline business processes, enhance employee productivity, and improve enterprise efficiency.
How Does Upskilling & Reskilling Save Money?
Besides the intangible benefits of boosting employee morale by investing in furthering their careers, upskilling and reskilling offers various other tangible benefits3, including:
Reduce Training and Recruitment Costs
When recruiting employees with a new skill set, you’ll also have to bear associated costs — interviewing, hiring, background checks, onboarding, process training, etc. And, with the current highly competitive job market, employees with niche skills can demand top dollar.
Retraining your current workforce with new skills can help save on the costs associated with new hires. With upskilling and reskilling, you’ll already have skilled employees trained on your organization’s processes and policies, so they can hit the ground running in their new skill or upgraded role.
Retain Knowledge and Talent
The technological landscape will continue evolving with new tech adopted every few years. But, loyal employees with years or even decades of accumulated knowledge about your company’s product verges on priceless.
Upskilling and reskilling employees ensure that your company’s offerings keep pace with changing trends while retaining top talent.
Tenured employees at your organization are already aware of your business and processes. The knowledge they’ve gained over the years is valuable. Retraining them will help retain the employees and their expertise within the organization.
If you don’t upskill or reskill them, they may update their skills themselves and find another employer. You’ll have to look for new talent and bear associated hiring costs to replace them, not to mention the knowledge and experience they take with them.
An Adaptable, Future-Ready Workforce
Cross-trained employees with diverse knowledge in multiple areas are a significant asset to any organization.
They offer better insights and can weigh in on multiple areas to enable the business to function more efficiently. With multiple skill sets, upskilled and reskilled employees can be leveraged across projects, teams, and departments. And, having already been retrained once, they can adapt other new technologies as they come.
How To Upskill and Reskill Your Employees
Flatiron School offers full-time and part-time programs in four different disciplines- Software Engineering, Data Science, Cybersecurity, and Product Design.
No matter your industry or offering, employee skill gaps in these areas can be addressed and resolved with our program offerings.
Software Engineering
With Flatiron School’s Software Engineering curriculum, employees can be ready to build software for websites and apps. They’ll learn about:
- Front-end development
- Front-end web applications
- Back-end development
- Back-end web application programming interfaces (APIs)
Data Science
By attending Flatiron School’s Data Science curriculum, employees can master the art of data analysis. They’ll be able to find patterns in data and help the organization make data-driven decisions. They’ll learn:
- Data analysis and engineering
- Scientific computing and quantitative methods
- Machine learning fundamentals
- Advanced machine learning
Product Design
With Flatiron’s School’s Product Design curriculum, employees learn how users interact with technology and how to improve brand messaging and enhance customer loyalty. They’ll learn about the various processes essential for effective product design:
- The user experience (UX) process — Ethical and inclusive design, foundational research, and ideation and innovation
- The user interface (UI) process — Elements of visual composition, typography and color, and interaction and animation
- Product design framework, usability testing, and UI kit development for developers
- Micro-interactions, data visualization, and communication
Cybersecurity Engineering
Employees who enroll in Flatiron School’s Cybersecurity Engineering curriculum will become a critical component of your IT security team. They’ll be able to protect the enterprise, client, and employee data from getting stolen, hacked, leaked, or damaged. During the curriculum, employees will learn about:
- Network security
- System security
- Python scripting techniques
- Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC)
- Logs and detection
- Threat intelligence
- Application security
- Applied cryptography
Get Started With Flatiron School
If you’re considering a custom solution to meet your upskilling and reskilling needs, consider the following questions:
- Do you need existing talent?
- How many leaders will go through the training?
- What is your learners’ existing tech skill level?
- Which competencies and outcomes would you like to achieve?
- What are the desired program modality and delivery structure? (In-person vs. virtual, part-time vs. full-time, start and end dates, etc.)
Flatiron School’s Enterprise team works with your company to identify skills gaps and build a program tailored to your goals. With Flatiron School, your employees will develop in-demand skills to keep your company on the competitive edge and take charge of their careers at the same time.
To get a custom training solution for your organization, contact Flatiron School today.
Sources:
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/beyond-hiring-how-companies-are-reskilling-to-address-talent-gaps
- https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020/digest#report-nav
- https://flatironschool.com/blog/value-of-cross-trained-workers/
Posted by Anna Johnson / July 19, 2022
