One of the best ways that you can develop your company in 2024 and help it grow is through upskilling and training your staff to take on more advanced work. Your staff should be your first call if you want to grow your business and allow it to take on more work. Knowing where to begin when it comes to upskilling your staff is essential to start upskilling properly. Here are 7 essential ways to upskill your staff in 2024.
Training/Development
This is probably the most obvious option on the list, but good training and development can work wonders when it comes to developing the skills of your workforce. There are so many possibilities when it comes to training courses or qualifications, no matter the field or industry you’re in. You could invest in everything from digital marketing courses to NVQs in construction to help your staff gain the skills they need to do more advanced work. Take care to look for all the ways you can develop your staff with training and development programmes that can open doors for your staff and business.
Job Expansion
One of the best ways that you can stimulate upskilling and job expansion is by slowly and strategically expanding your employee roles. This means that the tasks and jobs that each employee is responsible for will gradually increase and widen over the course of a longer period of time, perhaps between six months and a year. When your staff get to develop their skills gradually over a period of time, they will be able to integrate the skills they are learning into their job seamlessly – developing skills ‘on the job’ is one of the best ways to effectively upskill your staff.
Job Redesign
This technique might not be for everyone, especially if you need certain and specific talent in roles to be able to make your business run smoothly. However, if you run a business where everyone is working towards the same goal (such as a digital marketing agency) , job rotation and redesign could be one of the best things you can do. This is a fantastic way to get your staff to share different points of view, skills, and knowledge. This is particularly useful for high level roles such as managers, who may need experience of a variety of different roles to be able to manage them well. Job rotation and redesign could be an effective way to help your staff get the skills they need.
Peer to Peer Coaching
As well as job rotation and redesign, peer coaching is one of the most effective ways to get your staff to learn from each other and share their knowledge and skills. Pairing colleagues together and ensuring that they learn from each other through discussion, training and working together is fantastic for two reasons – it allows your workplace to double up on knowledge as well as build on solid workplace foundations. Peer coaching could be a cost-effective way to upskill your staff.
Hire External Specialists
Despite the talent you already may have in-house, sometimes you need to draw in talent from outside to be able to help your staff develop the skills that they need. Hiring external specialists in the certain areas that you need to develop could be a very useful way to help your staff become better at their job. External specialists can also analyse the way your business is set up and provide you with a fresh perspective of how best you can utilise the staff and skills you already have access to.
Investing in Software
One of the main ways that you could be hindering the skills development of your staff is by using outdated software and helping to train your staff with the most up-to-date software – this is often referred to as digital upskilling. According to the World Economic Forum, it is estimated that at least 50% of people worldwide will need to find ways to develop their digital skills, such as typing speed, word processing proficiency and much more. Now that the vast majority of businesses rely on computer systems and the internet to operate, investing in your staff’s digital skills will only protect the longevity of your company.
Take Advantage of Funding Opportunities
If you truly want to take your business to the next level, finding upskilling opportunities that have funding behind them is one of the best things you can do. In order to properly upskill, you will need to put a lot of investment behind it – which can be a very big task for a small business. However, looking for funding opportunities that could cover some of these costs means that you could take your upskilling journey even further. Depending on the industry you work in, you
could be entitled to government funding or CITB grants to help you develop your staff’s skills.
Looking to upskill? Make sure to keep these 7 essential tips in mind to be able to grow your business throughout the year.