What Is Reskilling?

Key takeaways

Reskilling your workforce helps you keep pace with evolving technologies and prepare your employees for new roles within their current positions.

• By reskilling employees, you can address current skill gaps rather than recruiting new staff members.

• Reskilling is an effective way to maximize your talent while also enhancing the adaptability of your workforce.

• You can encourage reskilling by fostering a learning culture in your workplace.

Discover how reskilling can help you retain, attract, and develop talent. If you’re ready to start providing reskilling opportunities for your workforce, Coursera for Business gives you access to high-quality, customizable programs, so your staff can develop in-demand skills and gain experience using new technologies in real-world environments.

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What is reskilling?

Reskilling is the method of training an existing employee in new skills so they can move into a different role or department within your company. For example, an employee typically working as an in-person customer service staff member might train to take over a new digital customer service platform. Reskilling often involves training employees in new skills adjacent to their current position, making it easier for them to transfer their expertise into a new role without completely starting over.

When is reskilling necessary in business?

Automation, artificial intelligence, evolving technology, and the gig economy have all contributed to rapid changes in what work looks like, creating challenges for businesses, which may need help finding and retaining employees with the required skills to succeed in their roles. Reskilling allows a business to retain talent and create an adaptable workforce that can adapt to meet new challenges without high turnover. This eliminates the need to continually hire new staff members to address skill gaps.

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What is upskilling and reskilling? Key differences

Like reskilling, upskilling can address skill gaps, but it focuses on acquiring skills that enhance your employee’s current expertise and allow them to advance in their current department or role. Upskilling supports employees as they take on new responsibilities or senior titles. Conversely, reskilling moves employees into new roles or departments.

Upskilling is vital for investing in an employee’s future, capitalizing on their institutional knowledge, and understanding a business’s mission and values. Reskilling is critical for companies with significant changes or growth who want to keep top talent and expand their team’s ability to meet new challenges.

Read more: The Importance of Skill Development and Where to Start

What is reskilling used for?

Reskilling’s primary use is addressing the changes in workforce technologies, such as digitalization, automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. These changes create skill gaps because the updated technologies require staff to interact with new platforms and tools they must familiarize themselves with. 

Reskilling offers businesses the opportunity to maximize the knowledge and experience of their current employees by training them on modern technology and moving them into new roles instead of spending time and money to hire externally.

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Benefits of reskilling employees

Reskilling offers benefits to both employers and their employees. For employers, reskilling allows the maximization of existing talent in your business. Instead of spending the money and time to locate new hires for roles requiring background knowledge or expertise, you can move an employee into a new department or position and build on their existing skill set with lateral or adjacent skill training. This allows your business to grow and adapt to a changing landscape while maintaining a high-quality team.

Reskilling helps create an environment of learning and professional development that attracts high-quality talent. It saves employers money on continual hiring needs, creates an agile workforce ready to address changing technologies, and maximizes talent and expertise, all while boosting employee morale and satisfaction.

Your employees can also benefit from reskilling initiatives. Companies with employees who feel undervalued due to a lack of professional development tend to experience high turnover. Employees will leave for new jobs if they don’t feel an employer is investing in their futures. Reskilling addresses this issue by offering internal mobility to employees who are much more likely to stay.

How to implement reskilling

To create a successful reskilling program, business leadership must first consider what they are trying to achieve, whether it is creating a new department or addressing a pressing skills gap. Then, it’s time to identify employees who would benefit from reskilling, either because their department is changing or because they would appreciate the opportunity to grow into a new role.

Reskilling initiatives include a combination of the following facets. However, these practices are dependent on a business’s specific size, budget, and goals:

• Encourage job shadowing, which provides the opportunity for an employee to learn about a new role or skills during the workday from someone who already has that skill set.

• Hold training events to offer formalized learning opportunities.

• Create a company-wide learning culture that encourages staff to try new skills.

• Assign new roles to employees and offer consistent monitoring and progress check-ins.

• Adopt a tracking framework to ensure reskilling objectives and goals are met.

• Offer incentives to complete online courses or certificates.

• Provide opportunities to develop both technical and workplace skills.

A business’s reskilling initiative isn’t just for developing established employees; it is also helpful in attracting top talent. Professionals interested in working for businesses that invest in their workers are much more likely to choose a company with reskilling opportunities since it means they can continue to grow and learn without needing to constantly job hunt.

The adaptability of a reskilled workforce also means a business can avoid additional expenses or unnecessary layoffs, as well as the low morale and decreased productivity that tend to result from staff losses. When employees are happier, they typically stay longer, creating a business with a good reputation that others want to work for.

Reskill your team with Coursera

With Coursera for Business, your employees will gain access to content from 350+ industry partners and leading universities, where they can earn globally recognized credentials and gain experience using innovative technologies in a wide range of formats, such as Professional Certificates and Guided Projects.

• Discover the critical skills people need in today's jobs with our Global Skills Report.

• See Coursera in action with our demo video.

• Training a smaller team? Explore Coursera for Teams, designed to meet the needs of teams with 5 to 125 employees. 

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