Why the future of work requires constant upskilling

What is Upskilling?

Upskilling is a proactive way to grow your career through constant learning.

Expanding on your existing skills creates a path for career growth. Taking courses, reading books, listening to podcasts, spending time with mentors or being coached allows you to learn, keep up with industry developments, build self-awareness and stay fresh.

With the explosion of online courses and on-demand learning you may not even need to leave the office to upskill. But the right in-person learning experience can make it easier to immerse yourself in the topic. A deliberate change of environment can change your perspective. Value yourself and your contribution by requesting time and support for regular learning.

• Learning can open your mind to more innovative solutions, avoiding becoming stale or stuck in one way of thinking.

The upskilling advantage.

What do you know about changes to your type of job or changes coming to your industry? Taking the time to review your own role regularly creates an advantage. It’s easy to just keep turning up to work each day and not realise that your role has morphed, or the type of people using your product or service has changed. It might be easier to get together with a co-worker you trust and map this out together.

With increased self-awareness through regular review, you’ll be able to more easily see change coming and adapt to business needs. Innovation is a buzz word that has allowed change to be more easily proposed or adopted within companies. The best companies have always been innovative, it’s just that now we have whole departments working on ideas to keep companies relevant.

As technology develops to take over more menial tasks, there will be growing demand for those with well-developed enterprise skills such as critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, communication and leadership skills. Those who are technical will always be in demand, but they will partner with those who have solid enterprise skills – working well together never gets old.

• Identify the skills you need to learn to be able to continue to provide the best service and insights to your clients, leaders or co-workers. 

Upskilling can bring the team together.

For the business it can be more cost effective to train people they know and trust for a new project rather than immediately outsourcing. Experience gaps can still be filled from the outside, but those people are more likely to be welcomed into a team who is confident that their contribution is valued. If the whole team understands the gap, then they can see the necessity in bringing in a new resource to learn from.

• Look for opportunities not only to upskill yourself, but also others on your team.

Remain Curious.

It can be easy to stop learning. But imagine if you never went from music tapes to CD’s to digital. We need to be mindful of switching off to technology development just because we don’t want to appear unknowledgeable where we may once have been a trailblazer.

Who programmed the VCR in your house? Who resets the WIFI now? Do you know what TikTok is?

• Ask, be curious, try to be an early adopter, treat upskilling as fun.

For example if your child is playing Minecraft, they could be your best teacher. They love teaching their parent something new.

Engage in some reverse mentoring, the grads in the office will be looking to you for the lead day to day, so why not learn from them? Learning something new can give a renewed sense of motivation, fresh perspective or just something different to discuss over coffee!

How do I know what to upskill in?

Observe, listen and research. It’s amazing what you can learn from side-bar conversations, the coffee shop queue or from connecting with someone in another department.

• Be an active listener, be interested in the problems other people are experiencing.

Ask questions and be supportive. What you learn from them could be where your next big project comes from.

Get training support.

Research the skills you need then get ready to present your leader with a solution, not more problems. Consider if a trainer could come in-house and teach a skillset to a small group. It could be more cost effective and the training could be tailored to the specific business challenges.

Upskilling will help you feel excited and refreshed about your work. It can also result in additional benefits if you design or get into a new role with changed responsibilities.

• You might gain more flexibility or a higher salary.

Embrace change, enjoy technology, share your existing knowledge generously and always be learning.