Employee retention is a major challenge in today’s volatile work culture. With other companies trying to lure your best workers away with better perks and higher salaries, it can be hard to compete and keep the level of talent you need to reach your team’s goals. Not only that, but it can be difficult to hire people with in-demand skill sets when you need them most.
Managers might not hold all the purse strings, but that doesn’t mean they are helpless when it comes to retaining employees. One of the best ways to reduce turnover is to help great employees develop in their careers through upskilling, and pave the way for them to earn promotions. Here are some tips to help you get started!
Set Up A Mentoring Program
Whether you have a budget for professional development or not, you can leverage the power of mentoring to help upskill and retain employees. As a manager, you probably do lots of mentoring as part of your daily responsibilities. However, setting up a larger and more structured mentoring program can help people learn different skills without increasing your workload.
Mentors can be people with seniority who have in-depth knowledge of the company, but they can also be younger workers who have more up-to-date skill sets. In many cases, it makes sense to have mentoring work both ways so that both newer and more established employees have a chance to upskill by teaching each other.
This is an important step in organizing workplace resilience training for employees because it will help your workers handle the pressure of learning new skills and adapting to changing work environments.
Offer Both Group And Independent Learning Opportunities
There are lots of options available for professional development through e-learning and reputable in-person training programs. If you have the budget, it’s best to offer multiple options for upskilling to account for different preferences and learning styles. Upskilling opportunities should be available to all employees, although some will be more proactive than others in taking advantage of these opportunities for development.
Help Everyone Develop Better Soft Skills
As a manager, you know the power of “soft skills” in the workplace. To be a great manager, you have to be an effective communicator with good listening skills and emotional intelligence. You also need to be trustworthy, respectful, and confident without being arrogant.
Many problems in the workplace stem from poor communication and anyone can benefit from brushing up on their soft skills. There are several major benefits to having everyone work on their soft skills at the same time.
First, it gives people a chance to practice their soft skills with lower stakes. Second, it helps people improve their communication skills without calling anyone out specifically for their deficiencies. This helps to promote better communication within the office and reduces misunderstandings or interpersonal issues.
Finally, these skills will help workers in any industry or career path and can help pave the way for promotions and new management candidates.
Provide A Goal Or Incentive
It can be difficult to get people motivated for learning a new skill if they don’t have a goal or a clear purpose they’re working toward. Using training programs that offer a certification of some kind can be a great way to provide a clear goal for employees to work toward. Or, you could provide an incentive for people who complete their training courses by a certain date.
There are lots of ways to provide goals that will help keep your upskilling program on track. However, it’s important to ensure that your goals and incentives motivate and inspire people, rather than making them too competitive or causing them to give up because they’re too difficult to reach.
Give Employees The Freedom To Choose
If you’re flexible about the skills employees can learn as part of their upskilling, why not let them pick their areas of study? People are far more likely to stay engaged with the material if it’s something they’re interested in learning. If your company is in need of several different in-demand skills, it’s always a good idea to empower your employees and give them the chance to learn the skill they find most interesting and valuable.
Upskilling Is A Smart Investment
If you have great employees, realize that it will cost far more to hire their replacements than it will to invest in the people you already have onboard. Additionally, the benefits of upskilling go far beyond retaining individual employees — it’s a practice that makes for stronger organizations overall. Upskilling is a smart investment that will pay off significantly in the long run.
In today’s fast-paced world, hiring people with the right skill sets is a challenge — especially when there’s no guarantee that things will work out. It makes much more sense to find and hold onto people who are motivated and eager to learn, even if they will require a bit more of an investment to train and build those necessary skills.
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