Reskilling & Upskilling Your Workforce for the Future World of Work in 2022



The last few years, with the help of the covid-19 pandemic The changing world of work seems to be moving faster than ever before, with skills that were once in demand may not be applicable to the demands of the current working landscape. Organisations that are looking to not only improve their current efficiency but their overall future as a business are aware of the necessity to reskill and upskill their workforce.

Almost all (92%) of certified Top Employers have a learning and development strategy in place in 2022, with 96% of them also continuing to have a learning and development framework. This commitment to creating an environment that is encouraging to employees reskilling and upskilling is supported by 94% of Top Employers having a defined learning and development culture.

In 2020 the World Economic Forum found that, by 2025, 85 million jobs globally will undergo a transition between human labour and machine automation across fifteen industries and 26 economies. While this change in the distribution of labour has been faster than previously expected there is still, according to the World Economic Forum, new era of work will create millions of new jobs that will require a new set of skills that will highlight the value of reskilling and, in the case of other employees, upskilling them. We will look more deeply at this trend in this article by defining and then examining what these terms mean in 2022 and beyond.

What is Reskilling and What is Upskilling?

Reskilling is simply the process of an employee learning a new set of skills and responsibilities to help them undertake a new role in their current organisation. The process of undergoing reskilling is usually lateral learning experience that allows people to make a smoother transition in their career journey.

In contrast, upskilling is the learning and development process for an employee to improve their skillset to improve their effectiveness at work. This involves giving an employee the opportunity to develop and advance a particular skill, or set of skills

Reskilling and Upskilling as Top Priorities in 2022 with an Eye for the Future

As the need for new capabilities and skills increases with the changes in the workplace continuing at a faster pace than ever, reskilling an upskilling can offer an organisation a way to develop the skills needed to ensure that they remain competitive without needing to hire for each new role. The ability for companies to retain their current workforce is not only good for their financial outlook but is also good to deal with employee’s new needs that have come as we enter the ‘new normal’ way of working.

Reskilling and upskilling are useful for employees to help employees transition within the organisation. Acknowledging that this is necessary for the future and starting to do the work to put it in place are two different actions.

The first thing an organisation should begin with is analysing where upskilling or reskilling an employee or a set of employees could help meet changing business needs. This analysis work is particular to each organisation, and as such is not something we will dive into in this article, it is work that will guide how to approach the next steps. It must be reiterated that upskilling or reskilling should be tethered to an organisation’s needs and goals.

The second step that an organisation should do is get to the organisation to structure and standardise their upskilling and reskilling efforts. This can be done by building a skills framework but if an organisation already has a learning framework it can be integrated into that structure. It can take many shapes but if an organisation wants to take reskilling and upskilling its employees seriously it needs to be understandable for the whole organisation in whatever form it takes.

Creating a culture around learning is the final step to making reskilling and upskilling a reality. It will need engagement and excitement around learning to fully benefit. Additionally, there will need to be leadership buy-in to create waves around reskilling and upskilling.

Reskilling and Upskilling Benefits

For the Organisation

• Retain your best employees
• Develop your employees’ skills
• Reduced training and hiring costs
• Increase workplace moral
• Improve the reputation of the company

For the Employee:

• Keep stable employment
• Personal growth
• Professional growth through lifelong learning
• Upward mobility through role diversity

 Final Thoughts

Reskilling and upskilling are not only business prioities for now but also for the future. Organisations will need to adapt with their workforce for the changing landscape of work.

Measuring the impact of mentoring during workplace disruption

Each year, more than 1 600 Top Employers across 119 countries/regions complete the extensive Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey, which provides a wealth of information for our data analysts to collate for benchmarking trends in HR year on year. One of the trends we are seeing is that Top Employers are increasingly taking a more formalised approach to mentoring. 

Formal mentoring programmes allow organisations to create and nurture relationships by matching experienced managers with promising talents to meet specific individual development objectives.

Pairing employees with a mentor who is skilled in and capable of guiding employees creates a safe place for employees to learn, which in the current times of COVID-19 is ever more necessary.

But how do you create a safe environment for mentoring if the success of mentoring is based on the “human” connection between the mentor and the mentee? Mentoring must feel personal, relatable and connected. Pairing an employee with the right mentor is the most challenging aspect of mentoring, and the one.

So, if you are offering a mentoring programme, is it still appropriate or even possible during this pandemic? Although the virus has made it impossible for many organisations to continue face-to-face mentoring in the foreseeable future, it does not mean you cannot begin or maintain an online mentoring relationship. A mentoring programme can remain relevant and assist in keeping your employees connected, as well as be a means to show that the organisation cares for its people. 

Mentoring and talent development

Mentoring should be included as part of the broader talent development strategy. It needs to be tailored to the specific needs and objectives of your organisation. But it should not forget to consider the individual employee and where there are in their personal and professional journey.

It could be that the current situation changes the focus of mentoring for your organisation. Without the Covid-19 situation, mentoring would likely focus in most on career development, but now other functions might come into place which might relate more to emotional and well-being support.  

Therefore, it is a relevant for HR when evaluating and measuring their mentoring programme, to consider if the programme still fits in the context of the business needs. Relevant questions to ask yourself are “why does this initiative exist?” and “does this initiative still support our needs?”.

The importance of the right metrics 

Many organisations think they are measuring and tracking what is needed to determine the success of their mentoring programmes. However, this often is not the case. Most organisations focus their measurements on  traditional metrics, which are related to tracking of the programme and can include:

• The number of employees participating in your programme, either as mentor or mentee.
• The participation rate in the different initiatives: how many mentoring takes place in person, in groups or virtual for example.
• When and how often do mentor’s and mentee’s meet?
• What is the satisfaction rate of both mentor and mentee?

Although those metrics are important, they do not fully assess the effectiveness of a mentor programme, because they lack metrics related to determining the quality of the outcomes, such as:

• What percentage of employees in the programme is from diverse groups?
• What is the effect of mentoring on promotion rates?
• Do employees in the mentoring programme have access to more opportunities within the organisation?
• Does mentoring have an impact on employee engagement results (e.g. job satisfaction or employee wellbeing)?

Having a strong measurement strategy can be used to increase the success of mentoring initiatives, especially, if you can benchmark them before, during and after disruptive situations like the pandemic. utcomes.

Metrics can – and should – be gathered from a variety of sources (including employee pulse surveys, mood-barometers, interviews, and focus groups) and this will help provide a more accurate indication as to whether a programme has met success, or may require adjustments.

Mentoring via online meetings can still have an equivalent outcome to in-person mentoring, but your mentor and mentee may need some support in using technology to facilicate a meaningful conversation, which could include  guidelines to create a new rhythm and find the best medium for meeting online.

We see examples with our Top Employers that continue mentoring by using online video tools, such as Skype or Microsoft Teams. Other Top Employers extended their mentoring to all employees by offering near-peer mentoring through social media platforms.

If you adjust your mentoring programmes or add additional initiatives to support your employees within the current pandemic situation, it remains relevant to measure the effects of those additional activities. As we are still adapting in the world of work to the virtual environment, it is important to understand what works and what does not work within our organisation when it comes to mentoring.