How to ensure the effectiveness of upskilling programs

Overall, 60% of Canadians believe upskilling is very important for advancing their careers. However, the number of Canadian workers that are actually undergoing training has dropped, according to Statistics Canada (StatCan).

What are the top challenges of upskilling?

Currently, the following are the biggest challenges facing upskilling programs, says Thackaberry:

1. Identifying targeted learning opportunities: To succeed, organizations must align training programs with both employee aspirations and business objectives.
2. Tracking employee progress and skills development: Robust systems are essential to monitor progress and identify areas where additional support may be needed.
3. Measuring ROI effectively: Clear metrics to evaluate the return on upskilling investments are crucial for buy-in from stakeholders.
4. Promoting internal mobility: A successful program should prepare employees for promotions or lateral moves, reducing reliance on external hiring.

Employers have full control of the first item, and the third and fourth items come in post training, according to SkillsWave.

However, the second item should be a big concern for employers, especially as not every worker who goes through training sees it through successfully

And there’s an urgent need for employers to address this program, especially as many organizations have set aside millions of dollars to provide training for workers.

“There's an opportunity to help folks really be more precise about what their ROI of learning is,” Thackaberry says.

Employers can do this by tracking what skills workers are developing and their progress to have “a more holistic picture of their teams and their teams’ talents”.

Should employees fail to complete their training for one reason or another, employers can also put in place repercussions, says Thackaberry.

“If the employee is not making the necessary progress — for example, fails in the course or doesn't show up in a course — the employer can handle that several different ways.”

These can include:

1. Making the worker ineligible for training for a certain amount of time.
2. Making workers pay themselves if they want to retake that learning experience.
3. Implementing a clawback, whereby the individual has to pay back to the employer the cost of that training experience that they were unsuccessful in.

However, Thackaberry stressed the importance of framing education as a sustained benefit. 

“There's a lot of variables that go into the success of that individual employee as a student. But, in general, it's an investment case for the employer. There's a ton of evidence across North America that the ROI… is for every dollar you invest in training, you get $4 back in productivity, retention, internal promotions, those sorts of things.”

Here are some finals tips for employers, according to Thackaberry.

“The first would be to understand and target the skills that are meaningful to the business, while removing as many barriers to entry as you can. Balancing learning as an adult is difficult even when all the circumstances are right. If you want people to learn—and really learn, not just finish a course—make it simple for them to find and register for the right upskilling options. 

“That can mean offering courses of different lengths ranging from micro-credentials to degree programs. It can mean having self-paced options as well as instructor-led ones. It can mean a catalog that’s relevant to their roles and their goals. And it can mean direct billing to remove the financial barriers that pre-payment can present.”

Here’s how to upskill workers effectively, according to another expert.

Recently, SkillsWave launched Skills Guide—a new feature that leverages artificial intelligence to make it easy to build personalized learning pathways for clients so employees can explore unique career paths aligned to their employer, current skills and future goals.