Experiencing Talent Turbulence? There’s No Way Out But Up—As in Upskill

Whether your organization is desperately seeking new talent or drastically laying off workers, it’s the right time to focus your learning and development efforts on employee upskilling.  

• Why upskill? Because marketplace turbulence requires your organization to do more with less—and that means flexible, multitalented team members whose skills are always on the rise. 
• How should you do it? By leveraging the power of a fully upskilled instructional design (ID) team. 

• What if your IDs can’t respond? Reach for a lifeline—with the right outside ID support, you can manage immediate, high-volume upskilling demands. 

Upskill to Turbocharge Proficiency 

As researcher and author Ben Eubanks defines it, upskilling is about developing “additional skills to help make an individual more valuable in a current role.” Upskilling matters because work is transforming at a breakneck pace—meaning the skills employees need to do their jobs could change up to 44 percent by 2025, according to LinkedIn data.  

The skill part of upskilling means you can’t rely on lackluster training solutions. Your employees need learning experiences not courses, coaching not content, and guided practice not lectures. Eubanks’s 2019 Disruption study found that learning professionals and learners both agree: experiential learning and on-the-job training are the best methods for new skill acquisition. 

Do It with a Fully Optimized ID Team 

It’s tempting to think that a new twist on learning requires a new type of learning practitioner. But when IDs are agile and well practiced in design thinking, they are still the best players for your learning team—whether you call them curriculum designers, learning designers, or e-learning design specialists.  

Upskilled IDs will not fall back on the same old content-forward courses that serve neither your organization nor your learners. They will deftly balance objectives, context, deadlines, and budget to deliver the right solutions to fill employee skills gaps and reinforce proficiency over time.  

As Purdue University confirms, while an ID is only one of many roles on a given project, “studies suggest the instructional designer will be responsible for 30 to 40 percent of the project’s success.” 

Respond to the Wave with a Proven ID Partner  

You can’t afford to postpone employee upskilling, but if downsizing or the Great Resignation has left your learning and development function short staffed, you may not have the requisite time or team. Fortunately, outsourced ID talent can help you quickly fill gaps without hiring.  

Even better, with the right learning partner, you’ll gain not just extra hands but also new perspectives and dynamic solutions to ride out this wave of industry fluctuations while preparing for the next.