As we reflect on 2021, it’s worth considering the impact of organizations pivoting and accepting enhanced flexibility and mobility as the “new norm.” Companies of all sizes continued to embrace flexible work environments, and millions of employees working from home also found that learning from home was easier and more accessible than ever. They have also realized that learning and developing new skills increase their value, mobility and marketability. With the current labor market tighter than it’s been in decades, upskilling has become a mainstream way to achieve new goals and secure roles at companies that are actively looking to hire.
In the year ahead, I expect this trend to accelerate and gain even more momentum. As organizations are increasingly focused on engaging with, and retaining their employees during the Great Resignation, many are realizing that offering new perks and benefits isn’t enough to motivate them to stay. And professional development courses, when offered to employees as an elective benefit, don’t necessarily shape outcomes that would benefit the companies’ bottom lines.
Instead, companies are beginning to invest in more direct, managed interventions. Rigorous courses, where employees are engaged in active collaboration – with small groups, with professional mentors, or with educators themselves – take employees’ skillsets to the next level and create more value for the companies that provide them to their employees.
I believe that a talented and motivated workforce will continue to be the most significant determinant of a company’s success. Organizations that want to stay a step ahead of their competition will always have to focus on hiring and retaining the most talented, diverse, and driven workforce. Continuous learning, reskilling, and upskilling are becoming a central part of annual planning and goal setting for the C-suite, rather than a priority only for HR departments.
The kind of work, and therefore the nature of the workforce, is changing and will be substantially different a decade from now. Therefore, continued success requires that companies invest in and develop agile workforces – employees who continually learn new things, regularly upskill and reskill themselves, and adapt to new ways of doing things with creativity and innovation. This organizational agility will be a hard but important new capability for companies big and small. Doing so intentionally, with interventions designed to engage deeply in education and development, will achieve impactful outcomes both for the employee and the enterprise.
