How the Tech Industry is Reskilling their Teams for Success in 2021

Amazon has announced a $700 million investment in “upskilling” training programs for its workforce. According to Amazon, “there’s a greater need for technical skills in the workplace than ever before, and a huge opportunity for people with the right skills to move into better paying jobs.”

The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Future of Jobs Report predicted that by 2022, 75 million jobs across 20 major economies will be displaced by emerging technologies.

Amazon is just one of the many companies, large and small, working to “upskill” and “reskill” its employees, to get them ready for the jobs that will be in demand in 2025. The company says it’s targeting one third of its work force, providing opportunities for employees to get trained in high-demand areas like cloud computing and machine learning.

AT&T undertook a massive reskilling effort when research showed that only about half of AT&T’s 250,000 employees had the necessary science, technology, engineering and math skills the company required to stay competitive.

Why didn’t the company just hire new, better-trained employees? It came down to the bottom line. “We could go out and try to hire all these software and engineering people and probably pay through the nose to get them, but even that wouldn’t have been adequate,” said Bill Blase, senior executive vice president of human resources. “Or we could try to reskill our existing workforce so they could be competent in the technology and the skills required to run the business going forward.”

For large and small companies alike, it really does come down to the simple question: do you lay off workers and hire new employees or do you retrain your existing workers for the future? We reached out to several companies and experts for their input.

Is it better and more cost-effective to re-skill your work force or hire new talent?

“Recruiting, hiring, and training new employees is a notoriously time- and resource-intensive process. According to a report from the Society for Human Resource Management, on average it costs $4,129 and takes forty-two days to fill an open position. Another study found that the average cost of replacing an employee is 20 percent of their salary. Training employees internally can help cut down on these costs. At Guardian we’ve realized that helping existing employees learn new skills and grow in their careers reduces our hiring expenses and strengthens our bottom line.”

Deanna Mulligan, board chair and former CEO of Guardian Life Insurance and author of HIRE PURPOSE: How Smart Companies Can Close the Skills Gap

What skills are in high demand right now?

“Machine learning/AI skills have been increasing in importance over the last few years and are likely to play an important role into the future, so these are smart skills to focus on when reskilling. Cybersecurity certifications are also highly sought after and can be an excellent reskilling choice, especially for companies that are smaller and can’t justify a full-time virtual security position.”

Darrell Rosenstein Founder, The Rosenstein Group 

How do you go about re-skilling your workforce? “We start by evaluating the skills our employees currently employ. Next, we anticipate how our industry will change over the coming decade and what new skills will be needed. Then we start to plan a reskilling program based on the desired skills we have identified. We are investing in virtual learning programs based on digital resources. Internal company bootcamps are another option that we are considering where more customized training is required.

We believe that reskilling is not just about focusing on technical skills, it's also about instilling a growth mindset guided by a digital-first perspective and an understanding of how to leverage data to inform better business decisions.”

Matt Bertram, CEO & SEO Strategist at EWR Digital

What does a successful reskilling program need in order to be successful?

“To add true value, a reskilling program needs to be personalized both to the needs of the company and the individual employees. Proper analysis of your staff and its needs should be done prior to implementation. Take the time to analyze where the gaps are in your team’s collective skillset. Once you know which skills you need to improve, you can identify the employees who will be best suited to taking on that knowledge.”

Darrell Rosenstein Founder, The Rosenstein Group 

What are you doing to help reskill your employees?

“We do a lot to make learning accessible at Guardian—making courses available to a broad swath of our workforce, offering them both online and in person and removing all financial barriers. We want our employees to bring back to Guardian the skills they’ve learned outside our walls—whether at a college, a university, or any other program. So, we dramatically simplified our policies, cut red tape, expanded the list of approved degrees, and increased our per-employee tuition funding limit.”

Deanna Mulligan, board chair and former CEO of Guardian Life Insurance and author of HIRE PURPOSE: How Smart Companies Can Close the Skills Gap

What about your company? Are you providing the education and skills your workers need to grow their careers as well as your business?  How are you adapting?