TJ has teamed up with Workable and TalentLMS to look at the state of reskilling and upskilling in the COVID-19 era.
Together, we surveyed almost 300 training managers globally, as well as 400 employees in the US from ages 18 to 54. Looking at both sides of the coin showed data that provides some great insight but also a conflicting view of some companies’ training strategies. A snapshot of what employers said:
- 93% of companies have undergone reskilling initiatives, upskilling or both
- 43% of companies stepped up their upskilling/reskilling efforts after the Covid-19 outbreak
- Only 20% of companies target just hard skills with their upskilling/reskilling training
When we asked employees for their take, here’s some of what they said:
- Only 2.75% of employees say they don’t want any additional training
- 80% of employees have never asked for training
- 75% of employees believe their managers need reskilling/upskilling
“In this collective time, companies across industries, no matter their size or needs, moved their training online to keep going. Not all companies indeed assigned more courses after the coronavirus outbreak, but they definitely will in the future since all their existing offline training is, for the most part, officially online. We’re entering a period where online training is not another solution but the only way to go. Employers like it, employees love it, and it gets you geared up for the unexpected. So what could go wrong?” says Eleftheria Papatheodorou, Customer Support and Training Director at a cloud LMS platform, TalentLMS.
Keith MacKenzie, Workable’s Content Strategy Manager, says, “When you find that 74% of employees think their managers need training, that indicates the need for upskilling and reskilling as part of a more holistic employee development strategy. When your employee base feels they’re growing in your company and that everyone is growing with them, that is one of the most powerful tools you can promote in your candidate attraction strategy.”