Four Ways to Upskill Your Team

Upskilling your team means giving them access to training, tools, support, and time to develop their skills and careers. Personal and professional development is something that is great for your team, and what is good for the team is great for the business. But how do you upskill effectively and offer the right things to your current team? And why should you upskill at all?

You need to upskill your team because it is an investment in your organization and ultimately keeps your team moving with the times. And, as a big bonus, you are less likely to have a high employee turnover because teams that feel supported and safe are more likely to stay and perform well.

Here’s four ways to upskill your team.

One – Mentoring

Mentoring has a few purposes, and one of them is to cement relationships within the team. Peer-to-peer mentoring can work well, but it does put more demands on the team. Hiring a mentor who holds sessions during the workday can be more beneficial. A mentor will help your team members highlight areas they want to improve in, and they can be paired up with other team members for a skill swap.

Two – Planning

Many companies ‘take control’ of the careers of their teams. They decide when they get training, they decide when they might be promoted, they decide on the workload and the projects – everything.

So put the power back into the people of the team – let them identify knowledge gaps or highlight what they want to improve upon, and let them give you a clear picture of what they want. Together (and with the mentor), you can create a personal development plan that covers at least 6 months.

Three – Training

Not every team member will want to learn or be trained in the same thing. There will be some team members who are on a leadership track and will need to have something like supervisor training as part of their professional planning.

Training is invaluable and is one of the fastest ways for your team to gain more skills quickly and put them directly into the business. If formal training isn’t in the budget, or perhaps the team doesn’t want it – then micro-courses and short courses can be ideal. They can also fit into the team members’ lives easily.

Four – Consultant

You don’t know what you don’t know – and your team and you might run clean out of ideas on how to upskill them. And that is fine because there are specialists and consultants whose job it is to find gaps and know just what you need. For smaller companies, you can reach out to those who are highly skilled and see if they would be willing to coach your team.

A consultant in your industry will know what other companies look like right now and their future plans and can help you stay competitive.

The right support for your team and increasing their skill base is one of the most powerful ways to see a productivity increase; here are some others: Four Proven Strategies For Improving Productivity in Your Business.