As your print business recovers from pandemic-related disruptions, consider the skills that will be needed for your growth plans. In this era of continuous learning, workforce development should be an integral part of your firm’s digital transformation strategies.
Think about the types of skills your business needs most, and whether these skills can be attained by upskilling or reskilling your current staff, recruiting new employees, or hiring independent contractors.
Reskilling involves teaching employees new skills so they take on different jobs;
Upskilling focuses on improving skills that employees can apply to their current roles.
As part of your workforce development plans, consider these questions:
- What tasks can be automated?
- What tasks can be outsourced to gig workers?
- What tasks must be performed on-site?
- Do your employees have the skills needed to expand the work to be completed on-site?
- Are team leaders trained in coordinating projects that combine the work of on-site, remote, and gig workers?
- Can your staff analyze customer and production data to suggest effective ways to improve your operations?
If your plans call for automating more steps in your workflow, consider how your employees can be trained for more fulfilling types of work:
- What new positions can be created to give employees clear and rewarding career paths within your organization?
- Are existing employees willing to learn tasks such as how to program and monitor robots, use 3D printing, design printed electronics, manage inventories, learn structural design for packaging, or maintain e-commerce websites?
- Are employees comfortable using artificial intelligence and machine learning for tasks involving prepress, design, photo editing, color management, and marketing automation? (e.g. Are they keeping up with technologies that will change how they work?)
- What new skills will your salespeople have to master as the buying preferences of customers continue to evolve?
The value of adaptability and resilience was proven during the pandemic, when every business suddenly had to adjust to new ways of working. If your business grows during 2020-21, that’s a good indicator that your staff is already resilient, adaptable, and willing to learn.
Companies that lost revenues and employees during the pandemic now face the challenge of retaining existing employees and recruiting new ones.
Closing the Skills Gap
In a McKinsey reskilling survey conducted in December 2020, 58% of respondents said closing the skill gaps in company workforces was a higher priority than it was before the pandemic. And many believed that skill building (e,g, reskilling or upskilling) was a better way to close skill gaps than hiring, contracting, or redeploying employees.
Here are some reskilling tips from McKinsey and Human Resources Executive.
Rethink job descriptions and career paths. Instead of matching people to specific positions, identify which employees currently have the skills to complete work that needs to be done now and in the future.Explain that more rewarding career paths will be open to them as they gain new skills through ongoing training.
Support a culture of continuous learning. Many employees already know the value of continuous learning. During the pandemic, everyone was forced to learn new technologies for collaborating remotely. The slowdown in business also gave employees the opportunity to learn the skills they might need in order to change jobs.
Emphasize the value of soft skills. The workplace of the future will require people with skills in leadership, management, critical thinking, interpersonal communications, negotiations, entrepreneurship and training. People who are empathetic and willing to take the initiative will be needed in workplaces adapting to change.
Recognize that older workers may learn differently than younger workers. Every generation (Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z) has been shaped by different societal forces and technology changes So each generation has adopted different attitudes about the role of work and the balance between work life and home life. .
During times of change, it can be beneficial to have energetic younger employees working alongside older, more experienced workers. The younger people drive production, innovation, and technology adoption while older workers share valuable lessons learned from previous experience.
As educator Barb Larsen pointed out in a workshop on multi-generational learning, “The ability to leverage multi-generational diversity will be necessary for organizations to build and maintain high-performance systems…Too much excitement and innovation can turn to chaos. Too much conservatism leads to ‘same-old, same-old.”
Offer a range of training opportunities. Technology and markets change that it’s unrealistic to rely solely on colleges, universities, and technical training programs for skills development.
Other effective methods include online learning, association workshops, on-the-job training, and mentorship programs.
The best learning occurs when employees see how the skills, principles, and techniques they are learning can be immediately applied in your real-world workplace.
Explain the “why” behind reskilling. Make sure that employees understand the need for reskilling and can envision some of the new career opportunities they can gain by participating. In some cases, employees may be asked to “unlearn” traditional ways of working, and adopt new practices for the benefit of the company as a whole.
Reskilling employees is no longer a trend, but a survival strategy that fuels or sustains a company’s growth, writes Carol Patton in Human Resource Executive. She cites a study that showed only 45% of executives thought their employees could adapt to the new world of work. Yet, 77% of the employees surveyed supported reskilling.
Because of automation and artificial intelligence, McKinsey analysts predict that 14% of the global workforce will have to switch occupations or acquire new skills by 2030. That’s eight years from now. Will you and your employees be prepared for the new world of work? The time to start closing the skills gap is now.
RECOMMENDED READING
Human Resource Executive: “Reskilling: A Matter of ‘Survival’” by Carol Patton