Reskilling, Upskilling, And Retaining Talent In The Workforce

Improve core metrics quickly with better talent engagement

Employee engagement has taken a hit for the first time in a decade, dropping several points. We’re bombarded with buzzwords like “quiet quitting” that highlight just how disengaged folks really are during the workday. And in core industries like healthcare, the numbers are even more dire. 

The situation seems bleak, but there are outliers. In fact, some organizations are actually thriving – with double the rate of engaged employees at 70%. 

What’s the difference between organizations across the spectrum right now when it comes to employee engagement?

While turnover and recruiting are at critical junctures right now, particularly for high-demand industries like healthcare, there are certain elements that can dramatically impact retention, productivity/output and even recruiting that should rank highly in your priorities. 

Put succinctly, employees want you to invest with them. Reskilling, upskilling, and retaining your talent in the workforce today means investing in your talent across the talent engagement flywheel. What does that look like, exactly? 

It starts with “hello” (aka “the recruiting process”)
 
That’s right, you should be investing in your talent before they’ve even joined your workforce.  You are setting expectations and building trust with talent from their first touchpoint with your company. That could be a social post, a job posting, or a phone call from a recruiter. 

The Recruiting Process

Regardless of what and where it is, there should be strategy and intention behind every touchpoint. Areas to invest in talent throughout the recruiting process include: 
 

• Answering their questions - A chatbot can simplify this, create better candidate experiences by answering questions 24/7, and avoid adding workload to already-taxed recruiters. 
• Educating job seekers - This is important not just in the requirements from the job description, but in the soft and hard skills needed to thrive in the position and company, plus presenting them with the future skills they may need to gain as the job evolves.
• Make it easy to apply - Write job postings that sell talent on the most critical components of your jobs, and leverage technology that simplifies applications without adding unnecessary steps (because no one enjoys applying to jobs).
• Respect their time - Talent is getting bombarded with interest from employers across industries and locations. Yet, a majority of candidates have had negative candidate experiences. Respect candidates’ time with the aforementioned chatbots and clearer job postings. Communicate with them throughout the hiring process leveraging automation to keep them engaged and informed, without overburdening your recruiters. And eliminate unnecessary steps or interviews so you can make the right decision as quickly as possible.

Reskilling

You’ve spent potentially thousands of dollars and countless hours to attract top talent. Yet, many organizations simply send generic emails when candidates aren’t an exact fit for a position. 

That’s literally throwing away money, time, and candidates. 

In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that as many as 375 million workers—or 14 percent of the global workforce—would have to switch occupations or acquire new skills by 2030 due to automation and artificial intelligence. 

McKinsey also found that 87 percent of executives said they were experiencing skill gaps in the workforce or expected them within a few years. But less than half of the respondents had a clear sense of how to address the problem.

Reskilling is an essential part of the puzzle. You could leverage job-matching AI and automation to send silver medalists (candidates who were excellent but not the right fit for specific jobs) relevant jobs and invitations to apply. 

Alternatively, reskilling is increasingly popular with organizations that don’t want to lose those silver medalists to the competition. After all, coming in at #2 or #3 means that while talent isn’t right for that position, they were still strong enough to make it to the final stages. They can likely contribute elsewhere in your organization. Reskilling requires an investment on your part but increases trust and confidence in your company with talent. This then cascades into improved productivity, retention, and even referrals, yet again adding more talent to the top of your funnel. 

Even seemingly innocuous changes to your recruiting process can send ripples across your talent engagement flywheel. 

It Continues Through Hiring and Starting with Your Company

Many companies invest in a better candidate experience, only to drop the ball when it comes to onboarding and the earliest days of employment. These are critical days that will establish employees’ opinions of your company. It’s a critical juncture in your ability to retain talent (plus attract new talent through employee referrals and WOM).

Onboarding

Automation plays a tremendous role in onboarding as well. Texting a link to complete onboarding paperwork before Day 1 eases stress for talent before they begin and prevents dropoff. It also saves your HR team considerable time and effort. 

Benefits

Core benefits like healthcare, retirement savings, and family care continue to be important. While you may have discussed them during the hiring process, the details can get lost in the excitement of the hiring process and accepting a new job offer. Keeping new employees engaged and in the loop on benefits – even proactively sending them links to review and begin signing up for benefits – can help with opt-ins and reinforce your commitment to employees through your benefits program. 

Referrals

Another way to make employees feel valued and improve retention from Day 1? Ask them for referrals! Asking employees to refer more great people makes them feel important and valued. And if your organization has a competitive referral bonus structure, your likelihood of adding candidates to your funnel increases. 

Like with any talent engagement across the talent engagement flywheel, it’s critical to keep processes here simple. The onboarding and benefits suggestions above simplify processes for both talent and employers. In many organizations, the referral program is an afterthought and can be convoluted, difficult to understand, or difficult to participate in at your organization. If you haven't done a review of your program (and/or asked for employee feedback), consider taking a fresh look at it before going all-in on a referral strategy. 

Once you do have a tight referral process and strategy in place, automation can again simplify your referrals outreach to save time for overburdened HR departments and recruiters, while increasing results tremendously as we’ve seen here at Sense. 

And Should Be a Fluid, Ongoing Investment in Your Talent

Many organizations go into autopilot once talent has been hired and onboarded. But this is where the biggest opportunity lies to improve retention and increase those referrals I just mentioned. 

And of course, the literal and productivity costs to replace employees are significantly higher than the cost to retain them.

Communication

Effective communication is the top expectation employees have of employers in their organization. Yet, 63% of employees wish they heard from their company’s leadership more. 

Here at Sense, we hold biweekly company all-hands meetings, where we hear from every department on what’s going on in the organization. Our HR team sends out messages via email and Slack regularly, and we host virtual and in-person happy hours and more to provide opportunities for our team to connect and hear about what is happening within the company. 

If your organization has not developed or implemented an internal communication strategy, now is the time to get on board.  

Upskilling

The number of employers who felt professional development benefits were important to offer grew to 65 percent in 2022. More talent than ever is open to new opportunities, but that doesn’t mean they want to leave your company. I’ve already talked about how important it is to develop clear, concise processes and to make applying and benefits adoption easy for your employees. 

Upskilling opportunities are an excellent way to build stronger talent relationships and get better productivity, creativity, and results from your team. Research from Udemy found that 38% of the workforce was being upskilled or reskilled in 2020. That’s an increase of 24% year over year, but it also shows just how much opportunity there is for organizations to step up. 

Upskilling plays an integral role in helping define clear career paths and opportunities for your team. It builds confidence and trust in your organization, and as I mentioned, it can lead to significantly greater output. 

How to Put All of This into Action

These are all tactical moves, investments in an ongoing talent engagement strategy. But they’re also cultural and should become ingrained in your organization. An easy way to get everyone onboard and involved with talent engagement (because in many ways, as you can see, talent engagement touches nearly every part of your company) is to properly leverage a robust talent engagement platform versus one-off point solutions, which can vary from department to department and create fractured talent experiences with your company. 

Anil Dharni is the Co-founder and CEO of Sense, the leading AI-powered talent engagement and communication platform. Before founding Sense, Anil was co-founder and COO at Funzio, which was acquired by GREE in 2012 for $210M. Prior to Funzio, Anil led product and design at the third-largest Social Networking company, hi5. He is an international speaker and thought leader known for developing the best candidate engagement tools in recruiting.  Connect Anil Dharni