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Boosting
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Ly
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Employee
Skills
Reskilling
Upskilling
Cross Skilling

Mommam Nattapon Aunhabundit

61186029I
International Human Resource Management
Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

Table of Contents
Content Page
Background 3
- Terminology
- History
Impacts on Organization 6
- Developing an effective succession plan
- Increased employee retention
- Better talent management
- Efficient use of resources
- Enhancing performance and personal development
Implementation for IHRM 12
- Determine current and future skills
- Identify goals
- Choose the most appropriate learning format
- Develop a program for reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling
- Assess the need for new skilled employees and track their progress
Recommendations as an employer 17
Critics in Project 22
References 25
Boosting Employee Skills
Reskill
Reskilling is the process of learning
new skills which is the primary
reason to change occupations,
industries, or job roles. It involves a
shift in career trajectory; ultimately,
these activities help employees
develop new skills that will be highly
beneficial to them in the future.
Background Impacts
Terminology
Upskill
Upskilling is to enhance
learners' existing skills by
teaching them new skills or
strengthening their existing
knowledge. They can then take on
additional responsibilities and tasks
as a result of feeling more confident
in their roles.
Implication Recommendations
Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill
Cross-skill
Cross-skilling is to develop
new skills that apply to a wide
range of functions.
For instants, to improve productivity
and cross-functional collaboration,
a user experience designer could
learn software development
fundamentals.
Critics in Project
Boosting Employee Skills
The term “Upskill” has only existed
since the late 1970s, but it dates back
centuries. Throughout history, humans
have found new ways to do things or
have created new ways to do things.
It is inevitable that people will be
required to learn about each new
discovery or invention. (Juhasz, 2020)
Background Impacts
In the mid-1700s, the first industrial
revolution led to an increase in the rate
at which we had to upskill.
Technological advancements have
contributed to the pace at which
changes happen, resulting in the need
to upskill and the ways humans have
had to upskill faster than before.
Implication Recommendations
Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill
In spite of the pandemic's rapid
pace of change, the kind of
change is in fact more normal
than many people think; therefore,
it is actually relatively common
for people to need to reskill or
upgrade their skills.
Jake Hirsch-Allen
Critics in Project
Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

The need for employee upskilling is on the rise even before the
current crisis, technology was disrupting jobs and employees' skills.

McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2030,

as many as 375 million workers (14% of the global workforce)
will need to change their job or learn new skills.

The coronavirus pandemic has made the change in skill become more
urgent. Employees with outdated skill sets will struggle to keep pace with
their jobs. Adaptation to rapid changes in conditions is a necessity for
workers across industries, and employers must figure out how to match
workers to new roles and activities. Automation and artificial intelligence
play a significant role in this dynamic in which changing business models
post-pandemic will require leaders to reskill and upskill their workforces.

The solution is to formulate a talent strategy that develops employees'

critical cognitive and digital skills, their social and emotional skills,
and their adaptability and resilience. It is time for companies to double
down on their learning budgets and reskill. Nonetheless, companies will
be stronger in the event of future disruptions if this muscle is developed.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

Every organization strives to keep its employee retention and the company productive.
These achievements can be done by Human Resource teams through training programs.

46%
of organizations say that upskilling
and reskilling their employees will be
the primary focus area
With reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling,
of their L&D programs this year.
an organization can close the ever-growing skills gap, (LinkedIn, 2021)
reduce employee turnover, and
improve productivity in a stretched workforce.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

5 Impacts why the company should invest in Upskill, Reskill, and Cross-Skill

52% of CEOs from different countries show an

1. Developing an effective increased need for matching skills and talent.
(PwC, 2022)
succession plan
Promoting top performers is an important part of
succession planning. To prepare candidates for
key positions for the challenges they will face in
their new roles, however, it needs preparation for
what they will be facing in the new role.

The tools and insights employees gain from

upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling
themselves will enable them to face new
challenges in the future which will eventually
overcome the skills gap. Additionally, it gives
newly promoted employees a good start.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

5 Impacts why the company should invest in Upskill, Reskill, and Cross-Skill

2. Increased
employee retention

Employee turnover can cost an organization up

to tens of thousands of dollars in a 100-person
company, according to a Gallup survey.

Employees are more likely to stay if they know

they can grow through learning and development.
It could be the feeling of gratitude and also the
opportunity to grow in the company.

An organization can prevent excessive

onboarding and job vacancy costs by retaining
employees. (Mcffly & Wigert, 2019)

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

5 Impacts why the company should invest in Upskill, Reskill, and Cross-Skill

3. Better
talent management
Aside from recreating job roles to match current
and future workforce needs, businesses must
create a culture that fosters employee growth and
development while achieving business objectives.

In an ideal talent management strategy,

employers should focus more than just on what
makes their employees recruitable, motivated,
and productive. It is important for businesses to
consider the objectives of their employees as well
to ensure that both parties’ interests are met
which the development program will allow it to.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

5 Impacts why the company should invest in Upskill, Reskill, and Cross-Skill

79% of learning and development professionals

4. Efficient believe that it’s less expensive to reskill a
current employee than to hire a new one
use of resources (LinkedIn, 2021)

It can cost one to two times the employee's

annual salary to replace an employee, according
to Josh Bersin of Deloitte. Recruitment,
advertising, interviewing, and other costs are
included in the cost of hiring a new employee.

Even though developing skill training costs time

and money, the skills gained usually lead to cost
savings over time.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

5 Impacts why the company should invest in Upskill, Reskill, and Cross-Skill

80% of employees say that upskilling, reskilling,

5. Enhancing performance and cross-skill training has boosted their
confidence. (Apostolopoulos, 2020)
and personal development
Identifying and participating in learning activities
that correspond with personal and business goals
provide all employees with equal opportunities to
progress in their careers.

Employees can adapt to challenges and perform

varied tasks with the flexibility offered by
continuous learning that focuses on cross-
functional skill sets.
Additionally, it encourages workers to push
boundaries, learn about new technologies, and
handle new projects.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

How to Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill in Your Workforce

1. Determine which skills the team currently

possesses and which skills it might need in the future
In any upskilling or cross-skilling program, the most important asset
is the team. Conduct an employee survey and identify growth opportunities
and areas to see growth potential.

Skills Gap Analysis?

• Team-level combined skills, an
organization or department is Interviews,
to accomplish a specific task performance
or meet anticipated future reviews, or
business needs. assessments
can be used
• Individual-level are based on to determine
the current and future job employees'
requirements of an employee. skills.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

How to Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill in Your Workforce

2. Identify goals
Prior to creating any training program, it is crucial to set goals
before proceeding with the training.
• Would you like to expand the opportunities for employees and
their responsibilities?
• What positions are available in leadership?
• Are there any gaps between departments that training can fill?
Besides the company's larger goals, each individual should be able
to set personal goals that align with the training.

3. Choose the most appropriate learning format

In-person or live training programs are effective for some people.
Some learners prefer video-based asynchronous learning for its flexibility
and scalability. To determine the best approach, we as future HR
managers and the team must work together.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

How to Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill in Your Workforce

4. Develop a program for reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling

The next step is to create the training once we have decided how to implement upskilling and cross-skilling.
The program can either be developed internally by department leaders or externally by hiring specialists.

Reskill Upskill Cross skill

To stay ahead To workplace Across Job Functions

• Prioritize • Identify • De-specialize

Establish a priority list of skills, and
technologies, then develop a reskilling
plan that focuses on these skills.
• Incentivize
ü Make learning milestones related to
employee objectives.
ü Invest in mentorship
ü Create a learning structure that has
attainable milestones.
ü Recognizing through leaderboards,
badges, and rewards
Map the skills, competencies, interests, and
potentials to identify gaps in skill sets.
Personalized training, hands-on projects,
assessments, and one-on-one discussions will
help.
• Specify learning plan
Technology and skills they learn along with
milestones that mark progress should be
included in these learning paths.
allowing specialists to branch out from their
core competencies.
• Hyper-personalize
Identify team members who can easily transfer
their skills and develop a cross-skilling road
map for each employee.
• Formalize
Develop an organization-wide learning
ecosystem and learning stack, which includes
tools and platforms that enable cross-skilling.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

How to Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill in Your Workforce

5. Assess the need for new skilled employees

and track their progress
The value and impact of organization-wide training and development
efforts are determined by a continued commitment to the process.
Providing employees with the opportunity to expand their
responsibilities is key to upskilling and cross-skilling success.
• Determine and measure organizational goals and metrics
• Demonstrate individual growth in employee evaluations
• Track how L&D supports employee retention
• Continuously improve the cost-effectiveness of training

A video management system can be an example of a training tool

that allows analytics to be easily used to show each individual’s
progress and allow employees to gain the flexibility they need to
enhance their skills in a scalable way.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills
Case Study
Microsoft’s MySkills4Afrika
program
Inviting Microsoft employees
worldwide to travel across Africa and
volunteer their expertise to support
startups, universities, the public
sector, and small businesses.
Reskill in teaching and
emphasizing the future
customers
Background Impacts
Middle East and Africa Cloud
Society Program
Granting access to all
Microsoft online training courses
Microsoft Students to
Business (S2B)
Connecting job seekers
with thousands of IT career
opportunities.
Upskill in their study
Implication
Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill
Hire a diverse and inclusive
workforce
Representing different markets,
communities, or groups provides
greater insight, creativity, and
innovation.
Cross-skill with the diverse
talent pool through skill and
perspective
Recommendations Critics in Project
Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

From the employer’s perspective, I believe that we should start with

Strong Candidates for Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill who are:

Self-driven Initiative
Employees who show a In order to retain a new skill, it is
willingness to learn and a important to apply it immediately
can-do attitude on a daily on the job. While working in their
basis will be the first to existing roles, employees can also
be retrained. actively improve their processes
and acquire new tools and skills.

Well-planned schedule Tech-Savvy

By balancing learning and Almost all emerging job functions
existing responsibilities, will require some technical
employees will be able to proficiency as a result of
take on additional tasks, automation. In the future,
or train for an entirely new organizations will also benefit from
position, without sacrificing employees who are comfortable
their existing responsibilities. working with digital tools.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

From the employer’s perspective, I believe that there are some

Challenges for Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill to be aware:

A Mismatch Candidate’s Goal

There are times when employees' professional goals conflict with the organization's
objectives. Employees will move to another organization if they do not see any career
prospects in their organization. Thus, during the interview process, we must clarify
what type of work and training the candidate will receive.

Overlooking employee constraints

HR leaders need to understand the main learning challenges and constraints employees
face to promote effective work-based learning practices. Additionally, we need to know
how individuals can overcome these constraints. It is common for employees to feel
they do not have enough time to learn.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

From the employer’s perspective, I believe that there are some

Challenges for Reskill / Upskill / Cross-Skill to be aware:
A Mismatch Method to Identify Skills Gaps
Some companies completely fail when it comes to upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling
their workforce. In many cases, it is too expensive or too late for companies to reskill their
workforce because of a lack of real connection between the expensive training and the new
job or too theoretical educational material. Companies may also fail to understand their
workers' current skills, identify the skills their workers will need in the future, and figure out
how to connect the dots between them.

So we must bare in mind that assessing what workers know and need to know to
succeed in a completely different job is extremely challenging

Recognizing employees in a one-size-fits-all manner

Recognition and rewards that aren't competitive enough or follow a general pattern
don't make a particular achievement or milestone seem special. To make a rewards
system effective, we must tailor it to the needs of each employee.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

From the employer’s perspective, I believe that there are some

Theoretical approaches to leverage employee motivation

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Characteristics of a motivating job

The basic level of Maslow's hierarchy suggests that everyone works To engage the employee to work more, the job has to be
hard to earn what they need to live. HR leaders can then focus on more on the right side; nevertheless, the important part
training employees for upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling once of the type of work that is directly involved with employee
all necessary functions have been completed. motivation are the five main factors in the middle.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

From the employer’s perspective, I believe that there are some

Theoretical approaches to leverage employee motivation

Herzberg’s two-factor theory McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

Using Herzberg's theory, an organization can identify two kinds
of employee needs. It consists of motivation factors that
determine employee satisfaction, and hygiene factors that
determine job security and stability.
The Theory X leadership style is effective for new workers
who require a lot of guidance or for organizations facing
crises and needing a leader to take control. Leaders using
the Theory Y management style are best suited to
managing experts who make decisions without direction.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

In what ways does this project demonstrate the core concept?

#1 What core contents strike you the most? Why?
Having studied IHRD which focuses primarily on learning and development, I realize that reskilling and upskilling had
played a crucial role long before the term was invented. However, training has become more important than ever in light
of the rapid changes in the world. As a result, many employees find it difficult to keep up with all the skills they need to
succeed in the 21st century at work and in their personal lives.

If I become an HR manager one day, I will set the 3 consideration questions in my training for employees:
Are we learning at the right time / right things / right reason? And this is how this project gives me valuable
learning through articles the most since it is very practical and sensible to start my career effectively.

Which contemporary environmental or business issues

#2 does this project hope to address?
Based on the project mentioned in the challenges part, employees are likely to feel disvalue in training or have no time
due to the workload. Yet, if I would like to further my study, I would like to study more in-depth about how a leadership
role could also help to fill this gap. Having a role model can indeed inspire employees to see how they should
improve themselves, even without training, employees could slightly change to their role models in their own
way. Therefore, the leadership model, including strategies, styles, and culturally different, could offer another solution to
this current issue which should be covered in future studies.

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills
What issues in global business are in play in this project?
#3 Can your team list several key items (at least 3-5)? Please do explain in depth.
Problems
needs to introduce a new operating
system that requires their employee
to upskill in IT and English since
the manuscript is in English. Thus,
the company would like to send their
employee to university to learn more.
However, the employee does accept
the option because they were too old,
had no time to do unnecessary things
and they have already passed this
state before by on-the-job training
Background Impacts
Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill
Solutions Once they do not find it useful,
Not seeing the
importance of upskilling the employee will be against
the training and even the organization.
Theory X
Forcefully Not the right programs The solution does not align with
set the employee's current needs, goals,
rules and aspirations. They will not fully
want to learn things.
No time to do training As employees are burdened with t
heir work, they will not fully engage
in the training.
Integrate into the Job rotation, job enlargement,
Theory Y normal workday and job enrichment will better
Propose their performance effectively!
more
options
Shared social support Engaging the environment to use
the new skill is important, leaders
must allow them to try and test them!
Implication Recommendations Critics in Project
Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

Do you agree or disagree with the argument highlighted in this Project?

#4 Please elicit reasons why you say so.
This project gives me greater insight into how companies do their employee development programs, not just the trendy
terms such as reskill, upskill, and cross-skill. As a result, I now understand how the strategic plans of an organization are
holistically linked to the development of each department and how HR must pay attention to the personal development of
employees, and how to strengthen the organization's human resources department.

It is such a fruitful project because it allows us to design our own content using our own creativity while giving some
guidelines and challenging questions to answer. The more you learn from this project, the more you do the research and
summarize it down to the assignment which I find brilliant to show how much you pay attention and understand your own
topic that our kind professor brings up. Overall, I really like this class and project! XD

Background Impacts Implication Recommendations Critics in Project

Boosting Employee Skills Reskill – Upskill – Cross Skill

References
Bersin (17 August 2013). Employee Retention Now a Big Issue: Why the Tide has Turned. LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130816200159-131079-employee-retention-now-a-big-issue-why-the-tide-has-
turned/
Clapp (2022) Why Employee Skill Development Is Key to Your Company’s Success. CCIConsulting.
https://cciconsulting.com/why-employee-skill-development-is-key-to-your-companys-
success/#:~:text=Investing%20in%20employee%20skill%20development,employees%20with%20skill%20buil
ding%20opportunities.
Sharma (23 March 2022), Why Employees Don't Learn—and How You Can Address That with Employee Upskilling. iMocha.
https://blog.imocha.io/why-employees-dont-learn-and-how-you-can-address-that-with-employee-upskilling
Juhasz (25 June 2020). The evolution of upskilling. Galvanize. https://www.galvanize.com/blog/the-evolution-of- upskilling/
LinkedIn (December 2021). The Transformation of L&D. 2022 Workplace Learning Report.
https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report#2
Mcffly & Wigert (13 March 2019). This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion. Gallup.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-problem-costs-businesses-trillion.aspx
Panopto (15 September 2022). Upskilling and Cross-Skilling for Businesses. Panopto.
https://www.panopto.com/blog/learning-and-development-upskilling-cross-skilling
PWC (17 January 2022). Reimagining the outcomes that matter. PwC’s 25th Annual Global CEO Survey.
https://www.pwc.com/ceosurvey
Sayed (3 August 2022). How to motivate your employees for upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling. HRForecast.
https://hrforecast.com/how-to-motivate-your-employees-for-upskilling- reskilling-and-cross-skilling/#title-1-1