Current and Future Leadership

Upskilling and Reskilling

Use Learning Pathways to Elevate Your High-Potential Talent

 

January 16, 2024
7 min read

In today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing and technology-driven business landscape, employers are facing significant talent pressures. If you find yourself and your organization caught in a “tug of war” between economic pressures and talent pressures, upskilling and reskilling may help you relieve these pressures, stem the tide of employee turnover, and elevate your most high-potential talent.

 

If you’re wondering how upskilling and reskilling can benefit your team, you’ll find the following sections to be helpful:

 

Why Upskill and Reskill?

 

Upskilling and Reskilling Benefits

 

How to Upskill and Reskill?

 

Upskilling and Reskilling FAQs 

 

 

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Why Upskill and Reskill?

When your critical talent needs new skills to help them take on a new role or you’ve recognized their growth potential, upskilling can be beneficial. Encouraging and facilitating continuous learning, upskilling is an effective way to narrow the skills gap, enabling entry to mid-level employees to acquire and sharpen new skills they can use on the job immediately while they move up in their existing role or a similar one. 

Reskilling is another way to invest in existing talent, preparing them to take on different roles within your organization as you respond adroitly to shifting market conditions or new initiatives. In reskilling, your employees will typically be learning new skills to help them transition laterally into new areas where they can continue to demonstrate their potential and add value to the organization.  

When you embrace the value of upskilling and reskilling, you offer your team meaningful opportunities for personal and professional development. You also show your employees that you’re investing in their future.

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Upskilling and Reskilling Benefits

According to findings from a study conducted by Whiteboard Advisors, recruiting, hiring and onboarding new talent can be six times more costly than training from within, and turnover cost is equivalent to two times an employee’s annual salary, making cost savings one of the most significant benefits of upskilling. When you partner with DeVryWorks for your upskilling and reskilling requirements, we can achieve that win-win: A cost-effective and customized solution to close the skills gaps and create a low-to-no-debt education for the employee learner.education for the employee learner.

Here are a few more significant benefits of reskilling and upskilling:

Retain your high-potential talent

If your talent isn’t growing, your organization won’t either. If you can’t show your high-potential talent well-defined career pathways, they may not want to stay. Or worse, you may need to replace them with new talent with the skills required to meet your new challenges, embarking on a costly and recurring recruit-hire-onboard process that becomes a challenge in itself.  If you’re supporting their careers through continuous learning and development, talent will have a strong incentive to stay. 

Keep roles from becoming obsolete

Keeping up with the pace of innovation is challenging for any company and its people. By recognizing trends and creating learning pathways, you’re giving team members the opportunity to acquire the new skills to excel in new technologies and continue to evolve with your company.

Maintain your culture

You’ve built a great team. Talented and capable people who have contributed to an organizational culture you’re proud of. Enabling them to grow and develop as your company grows will help to reinforce that culture.

Build a diverse team

By offering educational opportunities to talent from underrepresented groups, you’re helping to lift a common barrier to their personal and professional growth while broadening your team’s diversity.  

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How to Upskill and Reskill

How can you acquire the vision and agility needed to narrow skills gaps and elevate high-potential talent? You need a strong partner. DeVryWorks can help you get started by analyzing industry trends and identifying the skills needed to respond to those trends in the short and long-term. Then we cross-reference those skills with the current competencies of your team to uncover the skills gaps. With these insights, we can develop a customized learning pathways and talent succession plan that can elevate your organization and its employee learners. 

Your upskilling and reskilling partner 

DeVryWorks is the workforce development arm of DeVry University, an institution that’s been focused on the technical training needs of adult learners since 1931, and a leader in online learning since 1998. Our no-nonsense, industry-focused approach continues to respond to the skills needs of organizations while creating learning pathways for highly motivated individuals as they balance their commitment to education with work, family and other aspects of their busy lives.

Our talent development solutions are curated from the vast curriculum of DeVry University’s certificate and degree programs, and designed for teams in these areas: 

We can show you how to reactivate your underutilized tuition benefits program, transforming it into a strategic talent development strategy and putting those sleeping tax incentive dollars to work. 

We believe there is power in providing the learning pathways toward the skills your people need to thrive. Let’s discuss your specific challenges and skills requirements. Connect with a member of our team to hear more about how our upskilling and reskilling solutions can help you build the skilled, agile and resourceful team to meet the challenges of this new age.

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Upskilling and Reskilling FAQs

How can DeVryWorks deliver a low-to-no-debt upskilling solution?

It starts with the tax incentive dollars ($5,250 per year, per employee) in your existing tuition benefits program. DeVry’s Completion Grant program can be applied to the remaining balance for eligible employees , so there is low-to-no-debt to the employee learner. A DeVryWorks team member can walk you through the process. Don’t have a tuition benefits program? We’ll help you build one that aligns with your skilling needs and your DEI initiatives.

What types of certificate and degree programs does DeVry offer?

DeVry offers degree and certificate programs in areas of study that include information technology, cyber security, networking, coding and programming, web and mobile application development and more. A partial list of business programs and degree specializations includes accounting, finance, project management, supply chain management, business intelligence and analytics management. 

Can DeVry help my team members earn industry-specific certifications?

Yes. For example, coursework in our online Undergraduate Certificate in Cyber Security may prepare your employee learners to pursue industry-recognized certifications like CompTIA A+, Cloud+ and PenTest+, and the EC Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). 

How do I get started?

Contact a DeVryWorks representative to discuss your upskilling and reskilling challenges and begin closing your skills gaps.

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