How to Ensure Scalable & Sustainable Skills Initiatives

For the success of an organization, employers must ensure scalable and sustainable skills initiatives. Skills development is a top priority in today’s workforce. Employers want to develop their workers in alignment with company goals to maximize efficiency. Employees are seeking companies who care about their professional development.

If you find yourself developing skills and competencies initiatives, you’ll want to ensure their longevity. A short-term program may be easy, but quick fixes are only temporary.

With upfront planning, it’s possible to design a program that is both scalable and sustainable. This way you can ensure that your initiatives will evolve to meet team and organization requirements. In this article, we explore how your organization can offer development opportunities to shape your team for the future.

What Are Skills & Competencies Initiatives?

Skills and competencies initiatives are programs that companies set up to develop employee skill sets. Such development is integral if a company wants to stay relevant and competitive. Technology is rapidly advancing and the way we work is constantly shifting. You want employees who can keep up with these changes.

Skills and competencies initiatives can come in the form of training programs, mentorship, job rotations, and stretch assignments. This can include team courses completed in-person or self-managed individual online certificates. A company may consider reimbursing staff for personal career development endeavors. Stretch assignments push employees out of their comfort zone to learn skills on the go.

There are many different approaches to skills and competencies initiatives. For them to be effective, you need to ensure the appropriate manager training. Continuous learning should have a place in your company’s culture. Skills development is an investment that will pay off in more ways than one.

Build a Strong Foundation: Align Skills Initiatives to Business Priorities

So how can you ensure scalable and sustainable skills initiatives? Start by aligning them to your business goals and priorities.

Consider your objectives for the next 3-5 years. Is your main goal to increase market shares? It could be improving customer satisfaction or developing new products. It’s important to be realistic and envision how you want your company to grow. Break this down into achievable milestones.

Once you know what you’re working towards, identify the key roles and functions that are critical to achieving your goals. If customer experience is a priority, focus your efforts on service reps and UX designers. Consider what specific skills and competencies they require. It could be training in data analysis or SEO knowledge.

When you can develop skills in alignment with your business requirement, you have a scalable program. This sustainable approach drives results and company growth.

Foster a Continuous Learning Culture: Make Learning Part of the Daily Routine

Another consideration to ensure scalable and sustainable skills initiatives is fostering a continuous learning culture. Learning should be an integral part of your company’s daily routine. Not only will it allow for constant development, but it can also motivate innovation and performance.

Lead by example. Managers should model the learning behaviors your company wants to see. They can share what they’re learning with their team. It could be in the form of a group email or mentioned in a brief daily check-in. Leaders should demonstrate how these new concepts or tools can be applied in different roles.

Make learning a habit in the workplace. You could assign 30 minutes a day to online courses. Reward those that complete them. It’s worth investing in quality learning tools. This could become a friendly workplace competition. Positive reinforcements will encourage employees to take these skills development opportunities seriously.

Utilize Technology to Track Skills Initiatives

Tracking your skills initiatives and their effectiveness can get complicated. Thankfully, there are many tools available to help you.

The data you can collect from LMS and standalone tools would be very difficult to replicate without technology. A learning management system (LMS), such as Cypher Learning LMS, TalentLMS, or Absorb can help manage skills development at scale.

They will help you create and organize courses, enroll large numbers of learners, track progress and completion, and gain data on engagement and outcomes. You can even survey employees to monitor changes in knowledge and confidence and compare it to pre and post-training. This will allow for better future planning.

Without technology, ensuring scalable and sustainable skills initiatives will get complicated and difficult. Technology can really make life easier when it comes to tracking long-term skills development.

Review and Refine: Track Progress and Make Improvements

The final thing to consider for scalable and sustainable skills initiatives is a consistent review process. This way, you can determine what’s working well and what needs improving to optimize workplace skills development.

Track the metrics. How many employees are completing the training? What is it costing you per employee? Has productivity and performance improved? You also want to get feedback from managers and employees. Do so in meetings and using surveys. Remember, they know their roles and requirements best. Trust their analysis of skills gaps.

With this information, determine how you can refine and improve the skills initiatives. You may need to add or remove some training programs. The format might not be working for everyone. Current incentives may not be achieving what you want them to be. Nothing is future-proof without constant adjustments. This is the only way to maintain sustainable skills initiatives.

Focus on Scalable and Sustainable Efforts

A successful company isn’t achieved overnight. By focusing on scalability and sustainability, you build skills development programs that have a real impact. Determine your company goals, create a continuous learning culture, utilize available technology, and frequently review and refine your initiatives.

Most importantly, understand the value of investing in your people’s professional growth. Do that, and your skills initiatives will truly transform how your company functions.