Workforce upskilling creates value in a recession

The abil­i­ty of com­pa­nies to devel­op and retain the right skills is crit­i­cal to their suc­cess. But in a fast-chang­ing world, the nec­es­sary capa­bil­i­ties stretch far beyond the com­ple­tion of par­tic­u­lar tasks. In short, com­pa­nies need a range of deep­er ‘pow­er skills’.

For instance, while robot­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence increas­ing­ly auto­mate rou­tine oper­a­tions, lead­er­ship skills must also improve if com­pa­nies are to deliv­er suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion to the cur­rent times. This means lead­ers must devel­op pow­er skills such as data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing, strat­e­gy and align­ment, and inten­tion­al learn­ing. Equal­ly, by using these skills they can empow­er prop­er diver­si­ty and inclu­sion.

Yet for many busi­ness­es, learn­ing and devel­op­ment efforts are stuck in the past, and as much as 80% of the $400bn annu­al train­ing expen­di­ture by organ­i­sa­tions is inef­fec­tive. Typ­i­cal approach­es include send­ing teams to lengthy work­shops or dis­tant con­fer­ences. “It’s an expen­sive, bro­ken mod­el that focus­es on con­tent only, when instead today’s work­force needs to be able to inter­act with, prac­tise and inter­nalise the new skills,” explains René Janssen, chief exec­u­tive and founder of the train­ing com­pa­ny Lep­aya.

Some­what more mod­ern approach­es include mas­sive open online cours­es (MOOCs). But these have inher­ent prob­lems, Janssen explains: “While they can be rolled out across an organ­i­sa­tion, they are essen­tial­ly knowl­edge repos­i­to­ries – and read­ing or watch­ing a video about a skill is not how peo­ple learn. In the aver­age organ­i­sa­tion, only 1 in 10 employ­ees will use these resources. Learn­ing is achieved by form­ing habits and repeat­ing the prac­tice.”

These ana­logue and dig­i­tal knowl­edge meth­ods are leav­ing com­pa­nies with an uphill strug­gle to ensure impact­ful learn­ing. “When it comes to train­ing at work, peo­ple have mul­ti­ple pres­sures, so their atti­tude is: ‘Do I have time?’ ‘Is it fun?’ ‘Is there a pur­pose to it?’ Organ­i­sa­tions have to think seri­ous­ly about how they deliv­er their train­ing and what the incen­tives are,” Janssen explains. “By mak­ing learn­ing enjoy­able, rel­e­vant, and prac­ti­cal to career growth, you increase the lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

Suc­cess here means intro­duc­ing dynam­ic learn­ing, using tech­nol­o­gy to aug­ment human expe­ri­ences. “In order to mas­ter a skill, you must first under­stand its impor­tance, then prac­tise on the job. That’s why it’s essen­tial to train and use the skills direct­ly with­in a ful­ly con­tex­tu­alised work­flow. This way we bridge the gap between the skills trained and the direct busi­ness impact,” Janssen notes. “Such prac­tice can be done dig­i­tal­ly with oth­er peo­ple, includ­ing through the use of intel­li­gent and engag­ing avatars.”

With upwards of three bil­lion indi­vid­u­als mak­ing up the glob­al work­force, train­ing ser­vices must be able to per­son­alise at enor­mous scale. “So many skills are behav­iour­al. The lat­est tools mean peo­ple can be analysed imme­di­ate­ly on how they act, allow­ing them to fig­ure out what works and what doesn’t,” Janssen explains. “AI can now read emo­tions and behav­iours, offer­ing advice on improve­ments. Mean­while, vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets enable immer­sive expe­ri­ences with emo­tion­al­ly-respon­sive avatars, so users have effec­tive prac­tice and receive nuanced, direct respons­es on the spot.”

This train­ing is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in a reces­sion, as it is cheap­er and more effi­cient, using intel­li­gent sys­tems. Out­comes and returns on invest­ment are improved, by con­sis­tent­ly and engag­ing­ly devel­op­ing a work­force with the actu­al skills need­ed to excel in the long run. “Learn­ing and devel­op­ment are there­fore becom­ing more strate­gic pur­chas­es, as organ­i­sa­tions think more about the big chal­lenges they face, and how to devel­op their work­forces accord­ing­ly,” Janssen says.

Com­pa­nies glob­al­ly are already work­ing with Lep­aya to devel­op their teams’ pow­er skills. They start by look­ing beyond nice-to-have capa­bil­i­ties and focus­ing on more fun­da­men­tal aspects of lead­er­ship, man­age­ment, and team capa­bil­i­ties. From there, they can think about how to opti­mise learn­ing inter­ven­tions, so that peo­ple have the incen­tive to par­tic­i­pate and can learn more rapid­ly on the job. Using Lep­aya, users can pre­pare for upcom­ing meet­ings, brain­storm­ing or pre­sen­ta­tions, and have rel­e­vant skills auto­mat­i­cal­ly honed mul­ti­ple times in advance, ulti­mate­ly build­ing bet­ter habits that become entire­ly nat­ur­al.

“Change typ­i­cal­ly begins with the busi­ness’ lead­ers, then per­me­ates the rest of their organ­i­sa­tion,” Janssen explains. “Par­tic­i­pants can prac­tice key skills in VR gog­gles, in a mock sit­u­a­tion sim­u­lat­ing real tasks. For exam­ple, for an impor­tant team meet­ing or a pre­sen­ta­tion, a prac­tice con­ver­sa­tion or speech can be assessed for focus and rel­e­vance, and for eye con­tact and vari­a­tions in spo­ken pitch. We can give instant feed­back, which users then imme­di­ate­ly use to improve their skills in more vir­tu­al ses­sions, all in prepa­ra­tion for the real-life sce­nar­ios.”

Lep­aya has helped thou­sands of com­pa­nies make sig­nif­i­cant steps for­ward, includ­ing the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices giant Accen­ture, which uses a cus­tomised learn­ing pro­gramme to devel­op new hires into con­sul­tants with­in just nine days. Mean­while, Pic­nic, the tech-based gro­cery deliv­ery start­up, works with Lep­aya to imple­ment a bespoke learn­ing path­way to devel­op its employ­ees towards lead­er­ship roles. And the con­sul­tan­cy KPMG is work­ing with Lep­aya to give staff per­son­alised learn­ing, result­ing in 86% of them reg­is­ter­ing for cours­es, and increas­ing tal­ent reten­tion.

Look­ing ahead, Janssen expects arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and vir­tu­al real­i­ty to be crit­i­cal in upskilling work­forces, and in strong­ly advanc­ing equal­i­ty and diver­si­ty. “So many job appoint­ments are made by some­one look­ing at an applicant’s edu­ca­tion or the pre­vi­ous jobs they’ve done. This ignores the unique range of skills a per­son may have, and poten­tial­ly over­looks swathes of indi­vid­u­als with essen­tial capa­bil­i­ties and valu­able attrib­ut­es,” he says. “The new tech­nol­o­gy means com­pa­nies can focus com­plete­ly on actu­al skills, tak­ing into account the total­i­ty of tal­ent avail­able, bring­ing the best on board, then devel­op­ing and retain­ing it.”

Today, fac­ing a reces­sion, busi­ness­es can make a huge dif­fer­ence in their prof­itabil­i­ty and tal­ent reten­tion by invest­ing in effi­cient skills devel­op­ment. “In tough times like these, busi­ness­es have less mon­ey and have to be extreme­ly strate­gic in where they assign their bud­gets and time. As they look to staff to do things dif­fer­ent­ly, it’s essen­tial to adjust and grow skill sets in the smartest ways,” Janssen con­cludes. “By get­ting upskilling right, and train­ing staff effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly using intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy, busi­ness­es can ensure they are strong­ly posi­tioned for growth.”

To find out about scal­able tal­ent upskilling and reten­tion, vis­it lepaya.com