Using digital upskilling to make a wider impact

While the pan­dem­ic has served as a cat­a­lyst for dig­i­tal upskilling, the need to update skillsets and devel­op tal­ent is some­thing all busi­ness­es should be look­ing at. Rev­o­lent was born out of two words put togeth­er: rev­o­lu­tion and tal­ent. Every­thing we do revolves around tal­ent, and our goal is to rev­o­lu­tionise that space. We know that there sim­ply isn’t enough tal­ent out there to fill demand in the tech­nol­o­gy space, so we help both busi­ness­es and job­seek­ers fill this need by cre­at­ing the tal­ent.

Can­di­dates from tech­nol­o­gy back­grounds come to us to cross-train on plat­forms like Sales­force before being placed with clients to gain busi­ness expe­ri­ence. For busi­ness­es, we’re a high­ly valu­able, cost-effec­tive way to build their tal­ent pipelines.

Flexible, agile, rounded

While dig­i­tal upskilling has always been preva­lent, the pan­dem­ic has had a cat­alyt­ic effect as organ­i­sa­tions dou­ble down on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes. Busi­ness­es have a duty to upskill employ­ees, but it’s not always easy to devel­op pro­grammes your­self. The pace of change in tech­nol­o­gy and the demand for cer­tain skills means that busi­ness­es some­times have to look exter­nal­ly, which is where Rev­o­lent comes in – par­tic­u­lar­ly when employ­ers need to hire in bulk and don’t have the exper­tise.

That’s not to say that employ­ers should only focus on tech­ni­cal skills. All tech­no­log­i­cal skills even­tu­al­ly become redun­dant, as new tech­nolo­gies and cod­ing lan­guages emerge. That is exact­ly why cross-train­ing and upskilling is so impor­tant. Instead of try­ing to force skills to remain rel­e­vant, what we need to do is make sure organ­i­sa­tions have the sup­port and train­ing in place to trans­form their sys­tems, skills and knowl­edge into some­thing new that meets the demands of busi­ness today.

It’s also why tech­ni­cal skills and soft skills – or con­sul­tan­cy skills as I pre­fer to call them – go hand in hand. One with­out the oth­er isn’t effec­tive. There will always be tech­ni­cal skills as busi­ness­es will always need peo­ple who can oper­ate the tools. How­ev­er, con­sul­tan­cy skills like com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Employ­ees need to be able to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with stake­hold­ers and trans­late their require­ments. If your best coder can’t explain what they’re doing and the impact it’s hav­ing on the busi­ness, it won’t be as effec­tive.

The digital skills gap

For years our edu­ca­tion sys­tem has been behind the curve when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy. What peo­ple learn in school and uni­ver­si­ty doesn’t resem­ble what an actu­al career in the indus­try looks like. I believe that busi­ness­es should be work­ing more close­ly with schools and uni­ver­si­ties to update cur­ricu­lums to more accu­rate­ly reflect the needs of the indus­try. Tack­ling dig­i­tal skills gaps can’t be done alone. Gov­ern­ments, edu­ca­tors and busi­ness lead­ers all need to come togeth­er to change the nar­ra­tive.

Of course, for busi­ness­es, there is the added incen­tive of employ­er brand­ing that upskilling has. Both employ­ees and cus­tomers are becom­ing more con­cerned with what a busi­ness stands for – what they do, how they do it and the impact they have.

As the indus­try grows and more tech jobs become avail­able, peo­ple will have more choice over where they work. A job for life is a rare thing today, not nec­es­sar­i­ly because of a lack of loy­al­ty, but because of the pace of change in tech­nol­o­gy and the vast amount of choice this gen­er­a­tion has. This is why con­stant train­ing and upskilling is so appeal­ing when con­sid­er­ing employ­ers and research bears that out. That’s why we make a huge invest­ment in our peo­ple upfront, pro­vid­ing ini­tial train­ing of between 10–12 weeks before expe­ri­ence with an employ­er.

Set your values

When peo­ple talk about employ­er brand­ing, what they real­ly should be think­ing about is core val­ues. What brings your peo­ple togeth­er as a col­lec­tive? You need to be able to com­mu­ni­cate this clear­ly inter­nal­ly, oth­er­wise you’ll strug­gle to artic­u­late your brand exter­nal­ly.

When Rev­o­lent devel­oped our core val­ues, the first thing I did was to speak to our employ­ees to get their views. Val­ues need to be led from the top and not out­sourced to HR or mar­ket­ing. Once you set your val­ues, they should dri­ve deci­sion mak­ing. This will impact who you hire, how you devel­op your peo­ple and what clients you work with.

For exam­ple, one of our val­ues is cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ences. So when we inter­view new can­di­dates, we con­scious­ly look for those with dif­fer­ent view­points because this is key to inno­va­tion. Or take our busi­ness deci­sions. We turned down a client last year because they had a prob­lem with some­thing we were pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty wise. The client was not aligned with our val­ues, and there­fore the part­ner­ship would not work. Get your val­ues right, and it under­pins every­thing you do.

Ulti­mate­ly, it comes down to lis­ten­ing. A lot of lead­ers are good at telling peo­ple what to do, but what I strive to cre­ate is an open and trans­par­ent envi­ron­ment where feed­back goes both ways. Peo­ple don’t work for a brand, logo or office space – peo­ple work for peo­ple, and it is cru­cial that lead­ers lis­ten to what their employ­ees have to say – good and bad – if they real­ly want to cre­ate a work­place where peo­ple want to be.

To find out how Sales­force is pow­er­ing the work­force of tomor­row, vis­it trailhead.salesforce.com.