Upskilling is the process of helping employees develop new or advanced skills so they can perform their current roles more effectively and adapt to changing workplace demands.
Upskilling at a Glance
- Means developing advanced skills for current roles
- Closes the workplace skills gaps
- Improves company productivity and performance
- Helps leadership development
- Increases employee retention
What Is Upskilling?
Upskilling refers to structured training that helps employees improve existing skills or develop advanced capabilities within their current role.
Upskilling is the process of helping employees to further develop their existing skills and to learn new skills, to further extend their expertise, through training and development.
Upskilling involves making sure that the right people have the right skills in the workplace. You are providing training to fill in gaps in knowledge to have a more efficient workforce.
Dr Valeria Lo Iacono
An employee might, for example, have been promoted from within the company, starting as an office clerk and now becoming a department manager.
This employee might understand the company culture and work tasks, but might lack management skills, having never managed before. In this case, upskilling can greatly help them if given management and leadership training.
What Are Examples of Upskilling in the Workplace?
Upskilling in the workplace typically involves helping employees build new competencies that help with career progression or performance improvement.
To give you a few examples:
- Karen is a software tester in the IT department, but she wants to develop into a computer programmer as part of her career development plan. So Karen signs up for programming for beginners lessons on the company’s Intranet site and upskills to develop the knowledge she needs.
- A new employee, Geoff, joined your company a month ago, and he is an extremely talented salesperson. You would like him to also lead a team, but he could benefit from being more assertive. In terms of upskilling, assertiveness training could be provided to Geoff.
- Times are changing fast, and much greater awareness now exists when it comes to understanding equality and inclusion in the workplace. Many employees (including many team leaders and managers) are likely not to have previously been trained in this topic area.
Why Is Upskilling Important for Organizations?
Upskilling is important for companies because it improves productivity, strengthens leadership capability, and supports long-term employee retention.
Effective Learning and Development (L&D) strategies rely heavily on upskilling initiatives. In effect, upskilling provides the following benefits:
- It improves productivity by helping to ensure that employees are better trained for their roles.
- Improves the workplace atmosphere because better-trained managers in areas such as ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Inclusion in the Workplace’ make for better leaders.
- Creates a better and more balanced workforce with more fully trained staff.
- Helps with providing solid career paths for your employees, which in turn helps to keep staff motivated and progressing within your business.
- Helps you to be seen as a company that looks after employees and provides good training.
Upskilling is often overlooked, yet it underpins many workplace performance issues.
The cost in terms of time and financial cost (such as hiring a corporate trainer) is often a reason why upskill training is ignored.
But you have to ask yourself – what are the costs of not providing adequate training to staff?
What will you lose in terms of productivity and a happier workplace by not providing upskilling-based training?
Upskilling is one of the topics in our workplace training strategy, guides hub, and employee engagement, so that you can help staff feel valued and supported in their development
What Is the Difference Between Upskilling and Reskilling?
Upskilling and reskilling are related concepts, but they serve different purposes in workforce development.
So are these terms all the same, or do they have different meanings?
Upskilling vs Reskilling vs Cross-skilling (Quick Comparison)
Tip: Use upskilling for performance in current roles, reskilling for role changes, and cross-skilling to increase team flexibility.
1. Upskilling vs Reskilling
These terms are fairly similar in that they both refer to gaining skills.
The difference, though, is that upskilling tends to refer more to skills that you gain in order to further build on existing skills you have.
Reskilling, on the other hand, generally tends to refer more to skills that you gain in order to do a new or different job.
2. Upskilling vs Cross-skilling (and Cross-training)
Cross-skilling (also known sometimes as cross-training) refers to when someone is being trained in order to take on extra work duties, i.e., to help another person with their work.
Upskilling is different in that it is aimed at improving your skills for your own work tasks.
Upskilling for Employees: Training Course Materials
Companies often push upskilling through providing structured training programs designed to build job-specific and management capabilities.
There are different types of training that can be used for upskilling staff, and these include teaching them:
- Specific job skills (such as training on accounting software if they work or will work in the accounts department)
- Management Skills – for existing and new managers (many people get promoted but lack management training)
- Skills that an employee needs for their career development plan to aid their personal progression (these skills might combine with cross-skilling).
Upskilling for Existing and New Managers
Managers are one of the most critical groups to prioritize when designing an upskilling strategy. Managers set the tone for the teams, including in terms of:
- How effective are the teams and individual employees
- The overall atmosphere and employee happiness
- Levels of staff turnover
Evidence-based management development is especially important for first-time managers who may have technical expertise but limited leadership experience.
| Case Study: Bob of ‘Coxen Marketing’ was a salesman for the company, having originally joined them as a school leaver. Bob wants a new challenge, so he has moved to the customer service team and will manage six people. He has little experience in managing others. For Bob, upskilling training related to being a first-time manager can really help him, and he is provided training in Inclusive Leadership, Employee Engagement and Motivation training, and training in how to Manage Virtual Teams. |
Other titles that could be especially useful for a first-time manager can also include:
These skills will help the manager’s existing skillset to help her/him develop into a better leader.
If you are responsible for delivering upskilling workshops internally, structured, facilitator-led training materials can help you implement evidence-based management development without building content from scratch.
How Can Organizations Implement Upskilling?
Organizations can implement upskilling through a combination of online learning, in-house facilitation, freelance trainers, or external providers.
Whether delivered internally or externally, the most effective upskilling initiatives are clearly structured, outcome-focused, and professionally facilitated.
1. Online Learning (Including through Your Intranet)
If you are a company of more than just a few employees, then one suggestion is to use your intranet to provide in-house training.
Providing online training that each employee can do individually can be a cost and time-saving solution for providing upskill training in the workplace.
This is cost-effective when the same training can be used by large numbers of employees, i.e., if you have 100+ employees. For a few employees, the cost of getting the training designed tends not to be cost-effective otherwise.
2. In-House Trainer
If you are a large company, then in-house training can be the way to go, with one person focusing on pedagogy and being an expert in training delivery.
This does mean the cost of a permanent employee/s, but for a large company, having an in-house trainer often makes sense.
3. Hire a Freelance Corporate Trainer
Another cost-effective method can be to hire a freelance corporate trainer.
Rather than the need to have a full-time employee acting as a trainer, hiring a trainer specifically for the courses and topics needed can often be a good way to provide training while still carefully managing costs.
4. Use External Training Providers
For upskill training that is quite specific to the employee, you might need to consider sending them on external training, i.e., on a course that another company offers.
External training can be particularly useful for helping employees with their own personal career development plans.
Consideration, though, is needed regarding costs and how this training fits in with your company, and how beneficial it is to provide this help for your staff.
What Are Upskilling Best Practices?
Effective upskilling programs follow a structured, evidence-based approach to identifying skill gaps and delivering targeted development.
Upskilling also helps workplace succession planning and long-term workforce planning strategies by preparing employees for future responsibilities.
1. Find out What the Gaps in Knowledge Are
The key first stage is to evaluate what skills employees have and what skills they need. The difference between the two is the ‘Skills Gap’.
You will then need to look at how you can fill that skills gap, whilst simultaneously factoring in budgets and time constraints.
This employee might, for example, understand certain work tasks but might lack management skills, having never managed before. In this case, structured training for new leaders can help bridge the gap between technical expertise and effective people management.
2. Have a Professional & Career Development Plan for Each Employee
Many successful companies tend to treat their employees’ well-being and happiness as a key consideration towards their own success. Happy employees mean less staff turnover and hence reduced spending on re-training and re-hiring.
One key way to satisfy employees is to help them develop and move forward. To do this, ensuring they have a career development plan in place is essential.
With this career plan in place, if you are managing the employee, you can sometimes combine upskilling with helping the employee with their career development.
3. Personalize Learning (Where Possible)
The skills an employee has, and their career plan, are always going to be individual, i.e., bespoke to their experience, knowledge, and needs.
Where possible (time and financial constraints considered), try to provide whatever upskill training you can to directly aid each employee.
4. Re-assess the Skills Gap Regularly and Re-assess
It is essential to revisit and re-evaluate the skills gap in your workforce regularly.
As employees upskill, you may, over time, need to re-focus and provide different training.
In the case of a new manager, this might, for example, be ‘Advanced Communication Skills’, rather than a course such as ‘ Basic Communication Skills’ or ‘Intercultural Communication Skills’, that they might first learn.
What Does the Future of Upskilling Look Like?
The future of upskilling will be shaped by rapid technological change, leadership demands, and the need for adaptable, emotionally intelligent teams.
I also feel that in the future, these types of skills will be in demand in the future:
- Technology-related training is a key area you will want to think about for future employee upskilling. Understanding data, for example, is going to become increasingly essential. Likewise, complex problem-solving skills will be needed.
- Resilience training – Employees must be able to adapt to change and uncertainty.
- Emotional Intelligence – This is an area that has gained great prominence in the last few years, and it will be important in the future. We are becoming much more aware of the need to consider not just the specific job skills employees have, but also their emotional intelligence, such as their ability to work with others. Emotional Intelligence training will be especially important for managers and team leaders.
- Change Management – we live in a very liquid world, meaning that things change very fast, and the need for adaptability in businesses is becoming increasingly important. Employees who specialize and are skilled in Change Management will be needed.
As companies undergo digital transformation, continuous upskilling becomes essential to remain competitive.
Frequently Asked Questions About Upskilling
What is the difference between upskilling and reskilling?
There is a clear difference in that upskilling is about building on existing skills to develop an advanced skills level. Reskilling, on the other hand, refers to acquiring new, different skills from what you presently have.
Why is upskilling important in the workplace?
Upskilling employees in the workplace means that you get to fill existing skills gaps, help employees with their career development (which in turn helps staff retention), and you often get to see improvements in productivity and employee engagement.
What are examples of upskilling?
Examples include leadership training for new managers, AI skills, delegation, communication, and decision-making training.
How can HR introduce an upskilling program?
Doing skills gap analysis can be the best way to start, to find out what skills employees require and are missing. After the analysis, training design, and providing the training itself, measuring the outcome of the training can work well.
Many companies choose ready-made training materials to ensure consistency, professional design, and measurable learning outcomes.
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