During this 4th Industrial Revolution of digital transformation and the continued shortage of technical talent, an effective digital skilling strategy has never been more essential. Digital skilling helps you transform your workforce to drive productivity, innovation, and growth for your clients.
It’s clear there is still a significant global digital skills gap that requires more strategic solutions. An April 2022 McKinsey study showed that 87% of senior executives say their companies are not adequately prepared to address the digital skills gap.
Investing in the right digital skills initiatives can help you meet increasing tech skills demands, boost Employee Experience (EX) and Customer Experience (CX) and outperform competitors.
Strategic digital skilling leads to improved:
- Engagement—92% of workers say well-designed training programs have a positive influence
- Retention—94% of employees would stay at a firm longer if it invested in their learning and development
- Savings—79% of business leaders agrees it’s less expensive to reskill current employees than hire new ones
- Performance—Better employee training leads to happier clients and expanded contracts which can increase income per employee by 218%.
Why is tech skilling important?
In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses must embrace tech skilling to stay ahead of the curve. By investing in upskilling and reskilling initiatives, you empower your workforce with the necessary technological and power skills to navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Equipping your workforce with these essential skills offers numerous benefits, including morale-boosting, enhanced productivity, and a continuous pulse on industry trends. Additionally, tech skilling fosters loyalty, reduces employee turnover, and attracts and retains top talent.
Here are 3 key components of a technical skilling strategy to help you substantially improve the readiness and capabilities of your tech talent:
1. Provide effective onboarding skilling
Once you’ve navigated current tech talent shortages to hire the candidates you need, skilling during their onboarding as well as reskilling/upskilling/cross skilling throughout their career is key to employee and operational success. If you’re not there yet, you’re not alone. According to a Gallup poll, only 12% of employees think their companies excel at onboarding new hires.
Effective onboarding skilling is particularly important right now
Talent shortages have led to many employees not possessing the technical degrees and 100% of the tech skills they need on day one. More employers are broadening their pool of available talent by balancing each individual’s technical experience with their eagerness to learn and develop their technical careers.
A strategic onboarding skilling process will give you granular control over the skills of new hires and provide greater confidence that your tech talent’s skills always match existing challenges.
Onboarding skilling at Tek Experts
Tek Experts employs more than 6000 people across the world and our remarkable talent is the key to our success. We invest heavily in onboarding skilling, upskilling, and reskilling our people so they learn from the best in the tech industry.
We collaborate with our sister company, elev8, to provide continuous training to our employees and help them advance in their careers. They participate in comprehensive, personalized skilling programs that equip them with the right power and technical skills to set them up for success.
2. Implement technical skilling throughout employment
Equipping employees with the right digital skills to be effective and efficient is the best way for companies to meet the changing demands of customers, drive digital transformation, and stay relevant and competitive. Keeping technical capabilities current requires ongoing availability of tech skilling, upskilling, and reskilling opportunities for all employees.
Technical skilling has proven ROI
While it’s easy to see how providing technical skilling benefits the business on the surface, it’s important to look deeper at the direct benefits to employees and indirect value to employers. The right digital skills training leads to enhanced job satisfaction and career growth which can improve employee retention and reduces the need to source talent to fill gaps in capabilities.
Investing in employees’ digital skills improves employee engagement
- 86% of millennials would stay at their current position if training and development were offered by their employer
- 70% of surveyed employees are more likely to leave their current employer for a company that is known for investing in employee development and learning
- 70% of individuals who receive comprehensive training report enhanced job performance
Technical skilling at Tek Experts with experienced partners
Tek Experts and our sister company, elev8, have created various joint initiatives to help our employees learn new tech skills in the digital age and we’ve provided comprehensive digital training programs to leading global enterprises and governments around the world.
We have also partnered with third-party skilling organizations and programs around the world to grow global talent pools, help people make major career changes, and increase opportunities for underrepresented communities in the tech industry.
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, a non-profit initiative working to tackle youth unemployment across Africa, was selected by Tek Experts Rwanda to assess the country’s English-speaking capabilities and shed light on English fluency levels across the country. The result was development of a pre-work skills training program including technical training over online videos and WhatsApp to improve English fluency.
As of August 2022, 133 young professionals have graduated from the English Acceleration Program. Candidates who passed Tek Experts’ Rwanda’s English assessments were considered for tech support roles servicing global English-speaking customers. Of those, 23 have been hired by Tek Experts, with the remaining being placed in a pipeline for future employment as demand increases.
Microsoft Leap
Microsoft Leap is designed to transform the lives of people previously overlooked by the technology industry both because of their backgrounds and locations, transforming them into empowered participants in the industry. 98% of participants are employed in the tech industry after completing the program and we’ve had 75 women participate at our Nigeria, Rwanda, and Bulgaria sites from 2019 to 2022. We are continuing to expand Microsoft Leap in 2023.
3. Integrate power skilling into your curriculum
For many, the most surprising component of strategic skilling of technical talent concerns the skills that set people apart from technology. Soft skills, or “power skills” such as problem solving, communication, creative, strategic, and critical thinking, empathy, and leadership, are what actually shape customer experience, so they are as essential to address as technical skills. Combining technical training with power skilling leads to improved retention rates and performance of existing employees and new hires.
Power skilling at Tek Experts
Because we know how essential skilling is, Tek Experts hires employees who exhibit high learning ability, empathy, and eagerness to grow, and then invests in each employees’ career growth. We continually leverage our own training programs and those of elev8, to address both technical and power skills development to support an employee’s entire career journey.
The easiest way to effectively and cost-efficiently skill your workforce
Outsourcing your skilling delivery programs and working with a reliable partner can accelerate your organization’s digital learning journey. Many leading global organizations are already taking this approach with Tek Experts.
Learn more about the successful methods of how to source, skill, grow, and scale your talent in this eBook, How to Survive the Global Tech Talent Crunch.
