There were a few major takeaways from workplace disruptions after 2020, but one thing became extremely clear: digital fluency is now top priority. Many organizations suddenly discovered that their staff wasn’t ready to switch to offsite work.
In 2023, many organizations are still prioritizing digital adaptation. How can employers adapt to these new demands? Digital upskilling can help you get your employees ready for digital prioritization.
What is Digital Upskilling?
Digital upskilling is a term meaning the rapid demand for proficient digital skills in the workforce. Employees that are embracing their own personal digital skills development have an advantage over those that have tried to remain in the status quo or worse, actively avoided upskilling. The same is true at an organizational level. Manufacturing has been working towards digital upskilling in safety, production systems and automation for years. However, not all organizations and employees are at the same level.
Digital upskilling is the practice of ensuring your employees’ digital fluency is at an appropriate level. It’s not about singling out specific employees – it’s about training your team together so that everyone has the same base level of comfort with technology.
Digital upskilling is different from traditional upskilling – instead of honing existing technical skills, digital upskilling is about improving overall digital literacy. For example, in traditional upskilling you might train an employee how to operate a new machine. In digital upskilling, you might train an employee on how to use contact management software.
How to Upskill Your Workforce
Small Steps
First, it’s not realistic to expect your entire team will learn at the same rate and in the same style. It’s important to break off learning into bite-sized chunks instead of overwhelming your employees. Learning within the teams has to be accessible, easy, and universal.
Smaller, shorter learning is much easier for all learning types and workloads across any team and will be more exciting for the entire workforce. Focus on one system at a time. Depending on what software, tools and machines you use, you can often find YouTube tutorials or other learning materials you can then share with your staff. Including hands-on demonstrations as well and encouraging your employees to practice when able will help them to really digest the new knowledge and make it their own.
Create a Support Network
Prioritize employee development and reward tech-mentorship relationships within the workforce. This development structure places importance on growth while also boosting the morale of the teams. There should be a clear person(s) spearheading education so that employees know who they can go to with any questions.
This does require a bit more work upfront, because you’ll have to ensure whoever is spearheading education is familiar with the technology themselves before you spread the knowledge. In the end though, this saves a lot of time in the long run. It’s also important not to neglect upper management or CROs – they may not need to know all the ins-and-outs of every system, but digital upskilling flows both ways. Your entire organization will ultimately be stronger if everyone shares a base level of technological literacy.
Continuous Improvement
Just as technology continues to grow and evolve, so too are learning and technology never-ending pursuits. Establishing a continuous improvement approach to digital upskilling of individual teams but also the organization’s larger objectives will make the steps manageable and easier to adapt to new tech as it changes, or as the goals do. One easy way to achieve this is by designating a specific time for continuous learning and education each month.
The benefit of digital upskilling your entire organization is learning how to thrive in a digital manufacturing world and prepare for Industry 4.0 and other technological advancements. Employee engagement and morale are boosted when time is invested in their development, as well as saves time in the long run wasted on crash-course learning.
Related Content: How to Maximize Employee Satisfaction to Increase Retention
Support Your Workforce
One barrier to digital upskilling is that it takes employees away from their current task. Building and sustaining the tech stack within your workforce is much easier when you have support for your workers. Bringing in temporary workers as support for current operations while employees are in training can keep things running smoothly.
Strom Minnesota is here to connect you with trained staff ready to meet new digital challenges and opportunities.
Looking to fill contract, temp, or ready-to-hire positions? Strom Minnesota can help. Using our database of thousands of skilled workers, we can match ideal employees for you – with 0 work on your end.
Strom Minnesota is an engineering and technical recruitment agency that specializes in high-skilled job candidates for highly technical positions. We facilitate contract employment, project staffing, temp-to-perm and direct hire opportunities. Industries served include IT, engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. We are affiliated with Strom Engineering, a national staffing and recruitment agency.
