The Power of Upskilling: Investing in Your Team's Future

Uplifting Growth is one of the eight factors of engagement for a Flourishing Workplace. It focuses on training, development, and feedback provided to employees. Uplifting Growth improves the performance of individuals, groups, and your organization overall to meet the challenges of a changing world. Continual learning increases an employee’s engagement and allows your organization to maintain and improve its effectiveness.

There are two frameworks for creating a culture of Uplifting Growth for your employees at all levels of your organization—a development program and upskilling to fill in specific knowledge gaps.

Upskilling is not just a buzzword—it’s a strategic tool that can lead to more engaged and committed employees. Upskilling provides short-term training bursts to address specific changes or challenges. Over time, an organization with an intentional rhythm of upskilling will retain engaged employees who thrive on continuous learning and growth. This benefits your organization and values the people who contribute to achieving your mission.

A development program demonstrates to employees that there are long-term growth paths available in your organization and shows them steps that are essential for moving into roles with more responsibility. Best Christian Workplaces has a resource to help you create Career Paths for Everyone.

Create an Environment for Upskilling

Identify Skill Gaps

Use a team-based approach to get input from your staff about areas that are draining energy or seem inefficient. Make this a positive exercise with the goal of creating more job satisfaction, not pointing out employee deficiencies.

You may also identify skill gaps in the hiring process. A candidate who is a great fit for your culture may be missing one component of the skills needed for the job. You may decide to hire them based on their ability to learn and grow.

Often, upskilling focuses on the best use of technological tools, not only for the introduction of a new system but to equip all employees to use the features of existing systems to streamline their workflow.

Other skill gaps can occur in soft skills, such as communication. Perhaps the neighborhood around your church has changing demographics, or the type of clients you serve in your nonprofit has changed over time. Your staff may need enhanced skills in cross-cultural communication. These skill gaps may be more subtle, but if they aren’t addressed with training, they can undermine your ministry over time.

Training for All versus Individualized Paths

As you identify areas for upskilling, some areas will apply to everyone in your organization. When you are implementing the use of a new technology, everyone needs to be comfortable on your shared platform. However, insightful leaders know their people and acknowledge that individuals may have different goals and preferences for growth.

The following are some of the ways people on your staff might want to enhance their skills:

• In-depth training in a focused area: People who want to go deeper can become subject matter experts as they become more proficient in their current responsibilities and can also be a resource to other staff.
• Lateral learning: Some people are curious about how different parts of your organization work and will seek out new experiences and exposure to new people and ideas. They want to be cross-trained and widen their network of connections.
• Vertical training: People seeking vertical growth want to expand their influence and authority. They want to be developed as leaders.

Each type of learning will enhance the effectiveness of your staff in breadth and depth. While you might start your upskilling effort with goals for training all employees, adding individualized paths creates a strong foundation for ongoing engagement and workplace health.

Find Resources for Training

Start with an assessment of internal resources. Look around your organization for people with high learning agility who would enjoy leading short workshops to share their skills. For technological training, tap into early adopters of technology, often the under-30 cohort of employees, to value their contribution and knowledge. Consider skills on your board, advisors, or key volunteers for additional resources in practical training.

There are other low-cost options for training, including LinkedIn Learning and Udemy (an online learning platform). If your organization uses a payroll processing system, some systems include components of learning management in their products. Right Now Media has video training topics that can address skill gaps. For example, they currently offer an on-demand webinar on Ministry in the Age of AI.

Even if you incorporate inexpensive training options, there is a cost to training in terms of time and resources. And some skills require more expensive or ongoing training options. Well-equipped team members are more effective in their positions. And employees who are not well-equipped for their positions can have a negative impact on workplace health. Upskilling is worth the investment and can pay dividends in energized, engaged employees who fulfill the mission and goals of your organization.

Make Learning Engaging

While many upskilling training videos or modules can be accessed individually, learning as a group is more fun. Look for ways to build collaboration within and between teams in the learning environment. This investment of time pays off not only in increased skills but also in deeper relationships for future teamwork.

Your team doesn’t have to be in person to make this happen. Best Christian Workplaces staff is spread across North America, but we regularly incorporate training components into our meetings. A few years ago, when we were transitioning from Outlook to Teams, we wanted everyone to be confident in using the new tools available to them. We had a designated Teams “ambassador” who provided a short 5-minute show-and-tell training tip each week. Then, each month at our All-Hands Meeting, she provided a 30-minute training segment. We continued this pattern for 6 months to ensure that we were all using the features available to us in this transition.

Upskilling is an Ongoing Commitment

The rate of change in work environments means that a flourishing workplace will demonstrate a commitment to upskilling on an ongoing basis.

For example, the regular use of Generative AI in the workplace is a recent phenomenon, even though Artificial Intelligence has been a reality for technical specialists for decades. Even familiar products and processes are continually changing. Consider the last time you got a new cell phone or sat in a rental car. Recently, I was flummoxed as I tried to figure out how to put a rental car into drive! The controls were not what I was used to.

You can create an environment that normalizes identifying skill gaps and promoting continuous learning. This frees your staff to confidently embrace learning rather than feeling embarrassed by their lack of knowledge.

Sometimes, the tyranny of the urgent can prevent the time investment needed to make upskilling a priority. This mindset can miss the hidden inefficiencies that your teams are putting up with by not incorporating best practices or time-saving technologies into daily workflows. Without assessing and filling skill gaps, you may be eroding the foundation of your organization.

Start today by scheduling time to identify skill gaps and find training resources. Then, put initial training sessions into your goals and calendar for the next quarter.

As you invest in Uplifting Growth for your people, you also will enhance other FLOURISH Factors that build an engaged, healthy workplace. When your staff is engaged in joint training opportunities, you are also building Healthy Communication and Fantastic Teams.

Resources:

• Upskilling is one of several factors discussed in a recent article: Staying for the Right Reasons: How to Engage Employees Who Feel Stuck.
• Address the employee development component of Uplifting Growth with the Career Paths for Everyone Toolkit.
• If your assessment of workplace health is more than a year old, get fresh insights into all aspects of employee engagement through an Employee Engagement Survey.
• Equip your team with the tools to grow, adapt, and thrive in today’s fast-paced world. Download our free Upskilling guide to create a culture of continuous learning and retain top talent.