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Published 27 Apr 2021

Upskilling Your Employees – 5 Ways To Measure Development

by Joshua Stoneham

Making sure that your employees can build the skills they need to keep up in a fast-moving working environment is vital. In fact, UK companies are missing out on a reported £6.3bn in profits due to skill shortages across the board.

If you want your employees to stay on top and have the knowledge they need to do their jobs well, giving them the right tools to upskill themselves, not only in their specialist area but also in other areas, can help your company succeed and thrive in the long run. 

But how do you measure development? There are clear cut ways to measure success and gain insights into your learning and development courses for your staff. Here are five simple strategies you can use to track how much of a positive impact your staff training and development policy is having on your business.

1. Create a personal employee development plan

By creating tailored personal development plans for your staff, you can closely monitor how successful your upskilling program is. 

  • Creating the plan with your employee’s input is an excellent way to work out the areas in which they feel they need to improve or need additional training in. This allows you to set out key focus points in which you hope to see improvement on an individual basis following the training. 
  • Track things like the worker’s efficiency and pace and in reduced delivery times for projects. By aligning an employee’s personal development with a dedicated upskilling program, you can see how effective a course is whilst also promoting professional development.
  • This has an added bonus of improving employee retention, as your workforce could be more inclined to stay with your company as they know they will build up new skills and gain valuable training whilst there.
  • You can also use this as a measure for success, as a growing retention rate could indicate that your employees feel that they are developing positively due to your upskilling strategy.

2. Align your business goals with your upskilling plans

Although personal employee development and company development can feel like two separate things, they’re actually a lot more aligned than you might think. 

  • When setting out your KPIs, focusing on concrete ideas, like a boost in profits and productivity, can go hand in hand with your upskilling plans. 
  • When you’re looking at areas in which you can invest to improve profits, putting extra money into workforce training can be just as valuable as buying a new piece of technology or even hiring a new employee.
  • Think of an investment in upskilling in a similar way as a more tangible business expense and go about measuring it in the same way too. Think about the key factors you’d look out for when testing the success of a big investment and apply them here as well. 
  • Upskilling might feel like a less potent option when it comes to achieving your business goals, but having that training aligned with your targets will give you the best value for money whilst also giving you a solid framework to measure the success of your strategy through.

    3. Get feedback from your employees

    Hearing your employees’ thoughts and feelings on the effectiveness of their training and your upskilling strategy is one of the best ways to measure staff development. 

    • Understanding the benefits that your employees feel the training has on their normal working day and its weaknesses can help paint a clear picture of your upskilling program’s pros and cons. 
    • Using quantitative and qualitative surveys allows you to see the immediate impact it is having on your team.
    • Finding out whether they think the training program will help the company grow as a whole is also another excellent way to learn more about their perceived effectiveness of your strategy.
    • Understanding that there may be faults or downsides and finding out what those are early on will allow you to tweak your strategy and maximise its impact. 

    4. Pick a time frame in which you want to see results

    One great way to measure your ROI when it comes to upskilling your workforce can be done by setting out key dates or time frames by which you would like to see results. 

    • Although this doesn’t have to be set in stone, attributing a time scale that sits alongside your upskilling strategy will help you get a picture of how well the program is helping you to achieve your long and short term goals. 
    • The impact of upskilling your staff in specific hard skills, such as skills related to technology, can be seen almost immediately, so set short term time scales in which you want to see results for areas like that.
    • Knowing that the results of other upskilling efforts, potentially related to softer skills or skills within management, may take longer to come to fruition is a crucial aspect to think about.
    • Having clearly set out time frames will allow you to measure the quick wins, as well as the long-term impacts, and give you a deeper understanding of how well your upskilling plan is working.

    5. Set out which skills gaps you want to close

    Often, when there is a significant skills gap within a company, the instinct can be to hire new team members who have the right expertise to solve the issue quickly. With digital skills in particular, fewer than half of UK employers feel that young people are entering the workforce with enough digital skills training.

    • Identifying skills gaps like these within your organisation and addressing them through a dedicated workforce training program could pay dividends in the long run.
    • Having a solid understanding of which skills areas are weakest within your company can allow you to prescribe targeted upskilling training to employees that will enable you to close them effectively. Being led by this factor will give a clear indication of the success of the training.
    • If you still feel like there are significant gaps after the training has been carried out, it’ll show you that the training either wasn’t suitable for your team or wasn’t as comprehensive as it needed to be. Conversely, if you see the skills gap that you targeted shrink, you’ll know your training program was a success. 
    • Even if you feel that your team is highly qualified, looking at providing additional training in a range of skill areas can be beneficial.

    Whichever way you choose to measure development, upskilling your workforce can be an excellent way to improve retention and engagement and ultimately help your business grow.

    Why not explore some of the workforce training options available and determine how you can equip your staff with the expertise they need to take your organisation to the next level?

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    Joshua Stoneham

    Starting out his career in journalism as a reporter, Joshua later moved into marketing and content production. Joshua is a keen follower of trends across a broad range of industries and can offer deep insight into a wide variety of topics.

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