Upskilling and personas

This means enormous challenges for companies and employees. For companies, there is also the fact that the labor market has quickly become an applicant market. Companies therefore have to keep pace with technological progress without, as was the case 30 years ago, qualified young applicants queuing up for a job or even completing free internships. Dr. Marta Lang, Head of Public Sector (Academics, Government & Healthcare) at LinkedIn Talent Solutions Germany Austria Switzerland, said at SymPublic in May: "80% of jobs on LinkedIn have changed in the last 20 years so that people are now doing something completely different than before. One in three employees will be retrained in the next ten years." - This affects 1 billion jobs worldwide. Conventional approaches to personnel development are no longer sufficient for such dimensions. One solution to this problem is the continuous upskilling or reskilling of future and existing employees.

Upskilling for today and tomorrow

Upskilling refers to the training of employees to fill skill gaps created by new technologies. Equipped in this way, employees can continue to work effectively and with new technologies in their usual position. This is important in order not to be left behind - as people and as a company. In the context of lifelong learning, upskilling is not done once and then "finished", but ideally accompanies the person throughout their working life.

Companies that integrate upskilling into their daily routine not only gain loyal and well-positioned teams, but also save time and money.

Reskilling refers to the retraining of employees so that they can fill a new position that was previously unfamiliar to them. This is particularly important when jobs disappear due to technical developments and/or new job profiles emerge.

Multi- or cross-skilling enables employees to take on tasks from related positions. This makes them more versatile, enables job rotation and makes the company more agile overall.

How does upskilling work?

Anchoring upskilling and lifelong learning in a company on a permanent basis requires - like all change processes - good advance planning so that, firstly, people are involved and, secondly, the measures are effective.

The first step is therefore a skills analysis of the people already working in the company: What can they already do, where do they want to go, what are their personal development goals and what should they therefore learn in addition? Record all of this in an overview.

This is followed by a target analysis: What skills will the company need in the future? Which knowledge and skills may soon be obsolete? If you compare the two overviews, it quickly becomes clear which skills are missing in the company and for which people with less sought-after skills reskilling would be appropriate, and if so, what kind of reskilling. Make a priority list for the missing skills.

The next step is a plan for up-, cross- and reskilling employees: Professionally and in terms of time. The first overview is particularly important: the one with the personal development goals, because they are a valuable retention and motivation factor: what you like to do, you do well and what you have always wanted to learn, you learn faster and with more motivation. After all, the skilling plan should not scare employees, but offer them opportunities. There are many options when it comes to selecting skilling measures: Traditional training courses and seminars, or microlearning capsules are usually bought in from outside. But there are also internal measures such as mentoring programs in which experienced employees train others on the job or, as is common in training, a rotation through the departments.

In order for the skilling measures to be successful and the workforce to be motivated, all participants need the necessary time without feeling under additional pressure. The skilling plan should therefore be well timed so that day-to-day business does not fall by the wayside. (e.g. training courses after trade fairs, not before; in the "off-season", if available, in the "summer slump" or after an important project deadline, etc.). Mentoring programs can be firmly integrated into the weekly schedule and employees have full flexibility with microlearning. During and after the skilling measures, it is important to measure the new skills and ask the trained individuals for their feedback.

The fact that new skills are needed in the changing world of work affects not only employees, but also and especially managers: whereas leadership qualities used to be one of the most important skills at this level, today it is the ability to put teams together in such a way that they function harmoniously both professionally and personally and can grow together. Harmonious teams ensure motivation and reduce fluctuation. Professional qualifications will always remain important, but in the future, human interaction will become more important than the traditional CV.

Soft skills and personas in New Work

The era of soft skills has long since begun. According to a study by IBM, the half-life of a technical skill today is around 2.5 years. This means that anyone who does not constantly upskill their hard skills will eventually fall behind. Soft skills, on the other hand, do not become obsolete and they are not only useful in one professional field, but in every department and outside the company. Back in 2012, Google launched "Project Aristotle" to find out why some teams are successful and others are not. One finding is that it is not hard skills that make a team effective, but factors such as psychological safety (i.e. nice, helpful colleagues) and reliability.

Contrary to the widespread opinion that you "just have" soft skills, you can and must actively practise them. Interactive training is particularly suitable for this. In addition, many people - including managers - are not even aware of their soft skills such as creativity, persuasiveness, adaptability and successful time management. Sabine Müller from DHL has identified data-driven personas as a suitable tool for making soft skills visible and promoting upskilling in a sustainable way. The HR department grouped its real employees into clusters around six data-driven personas . The key questions were: Who would like to be addressed and how? Who has which skills? Who behaves how? Who can be "upskilled" with which tools? The real employees were able to decide for themselves which data-based persona - from traditionalist to tech-savvy - they would assign themselves to, so that no one was pigeonholed "from above". This gave the employees a sense of ownership and gave managers a good indication of who needs, wants and can do what kind of training.

data-driven personas are not real employees, but they are a good representation of them and, in addition to demographics and hard facts, they also bring with them wishes, fears, preferences, motivation and pain points. data-driven personas have hard and soft skills and are therefore the best approximation of employees when it comes to creating a skilling plan.