How to Create Effective Skills Training with Career Pathing

Your company’s ability to address the skills gap is going to be the most significant issue facing HR in the next decade.

Relying on the recruitment of new hires will no longer be a viable solution. Digital transformation of the workplace means that AI and automation are continually rendering skills obsolete while creating new jobs in the process. As those new roles emerge, the existing talent pool will be insufficient to meet demand. Employers will no longer be able to fall back on their default strategy of hiring new workers.

The size of this task is highlighted in Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends Survey which ranked learning as the #1 challenge for global leaders. Executives recognize that digital transformation, people living longer and an emphasis on the employee – and now human – experience have created a demand for continuous learning and development.

Furthermore, the survey revealed that 86% of respondents ranked learning and development as high in importance, yet only 10% of organizations feel ‘very ready’ to address it.

As the ‘future of work’ begins to assume a more defined shape, the majority of employers are placing more emphasis on training of their existing talent, but skills development is not moving fast enough to keep up with demand. Ongoing upskilling and reskilling can help to offset the impact on your workforce from these fundamental changes.

Understanding which training methods are the most effective for new skills acquisition is therefore paramount.

Creating personalized development opportunities

When it comes to developing your talent, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. To succeed in today’s workplace the following steps are recommended:

• Your approach must become more personal, placing development at the center of your overall business strategy.
• Personalized development opportunities should be offered to enhance skills acquisition. This approach enables you to provide your employees with the tools they need to acquire new skills.
• As well as being targeted to the individual, employees should be able to learn in their own time. Technology can help to support this.

A further, critical point to note is that learning and development is not exclusively for the C Suite but should be offered to all of your employees.

The most effective skills acquisition methods

A TD at Work report found that both learning professionals and the learners themselves ranked the following options exactly the same in terms of priorities for teaching employees new skills:

• Experiential/on-the job training
• Coaching and mentoring
• Company-provided training (such as lectures, e-learning)
• Job rotation
• Reimbursable college courses

All of these options can be used in an employee’s development plan as a means to close skill gaps between roles in your company.

Career pathing provides a clear route into all of these options, enables you to create individual learning programs for all of your employees and offers the following benefits:

• Employees create their own career paths, which are aligned with your organization’s business goals.
• All employees are guided to understand their own strengths and weaknesses and are empowered to identify key areas for development.
• They are inspired to work towards vertical or lateral moves within your organization, for example, through job rotation (ie, where employees assume new tasks in a different role for a specified period before they ‘rotate’ back to their original post).
• Career pathing enables HR and management to understand and analyze employee aspirations through internal mobility programs and aligns well with your succession planning program.

Creating a strategy that incorporates all of the above options for skills development is possible for companies offering career pathing to their employees. What is certain is that advancements in technology, machine learning and AI mean that skills development is one of the most urgent priorities for all employers in 2020 and beyond.

Watch the webinar: Career Pathing and Talent Mobility: Driving Engagement and Performance

Read the white paper: Career Pathing as a Talent Imperative

Ready to see career pathing in action? Request a demo!