Investing in employee training and development benefits your company. In particular, it means you have employees with the updated skills they need to succeed. But it’s also a major priority for employees and gives them lasting benefits they appreciate.

Employees want to learn and grow throughout their careers, and they value employers that offer them the opportunity to do that.

Invest in Your Employees

Employees know the employment landscape shifts at a rapid pace – and they don’t want to be left behind.

Consider creating an employee training and development program that helps workers keep up with the skills they need.

Research from SHRM found that 76% of employees were more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training. 48% say that training opportunities were a factor in choosing their current employer.

Investing in employee training and development also shows employees that your company values and wants to retain them. And when employees feel valued and appreciated, they’re more likely to stay, and stay engaged on the job as well.

Upskilling gets you a future-ready workforce and a loyal employee base. That’s a powerful two-in-one win for business growth.

How to Approach Employee Upskilling the Right Way

In order to fully reap the benefits of upskilling, you need to build your program thoughtfully. Offering your employees training in skills they aren’t interested in or don’t need to do their jobs can make upskilling become another meaningless time-waster (and can cost your business money too).

Here are 3 ways to build an upskilling program:

1. Find where your skill gaps are within your team

What areas do your employees need more training in? Categorize those skills into what is most urgent and most relevant to a large number of employees, and prioritize those first. Perhaps you’ve noticed a lack of project management skills on one team and a dearth of tech skills across the company. Organizing your training sessions to focus on the most critical ones will help you start on the right foot.  

2. Research industry trends

What skills do you think your employees will need in a few years, or a decade? Looking ahead can help you plan out a thoughtful employee upskilling plan so your people will be ready for whatever the future brings.

3. Ask your employees what they want to learn

You can send an employee feedback survey, take a Slack poll, or just ask your team, and get some plans for a starting point. Once you’ve decided which skills you should include, there are many external vendors that offer skill-specific training or access to a broad spectrum of upskilling courses.

Read the full report here