Companies could save up to £50,000 by reskilling your workforce

When you’re building a successful business, the people you employ matter just as much as the products and services you’re producing. But recruiting and retaining the right talent can be time consuming and expensive.

A new research report by the Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC) has revealed that companies could save an average of £49,100 per employee by reskilling their current workforce – rather than replacing or augmenting talent with people from outside their organisation.

While the cost savings are compelling, however, there are several challenges that firms must navigate to launch an effective upskilling programme. These include identifying the skills your business needs to bolster and managing the redistribution of people to prevent staffing gaps.

Recruitment versus reskilling: the pros and cons

As companies grow and evolve, your workforce requirements continuously change. And there are benefits to recruiting new talent into your business when you require additional skills. For example:

Introducing new people into the mix can re-energise existing teams
New starters bring varied experience and fresh ideas/perspectives
You can recruit people with the exact skill set needed to grow your business
There’s minimal industry training required to get qualified talent up to standard

However, there are drawbacks to recruiting external candidates rather than reskilling your current workforce. For instance:

Existing staff may feel overlooked or frustrated with their lack of career progression
It takes time for new starters to learn about company culture and processes, and to get up to speed with the ins and outs of their role
Recruitment is a time-consuming process, particularly for department heads, team leaders and HR staff
‘Buying in’ new talent can be more expensive than giving people within your business an opportunity to develop new capabilities

What are the benefits of reskilling your workforce?

As a result of the shortcomings we discussed above, an increasing number of employers are choosing to reskill their existing workforce rather than recruiting new talent. And there are many advantages to adopting this approach:

Reskilling improves the value of your workforce without increasing headcount; sometimes, a redistribution of labour is required, rather than expansion of your team
Current employees have already demonstrated their commitment, loyalty and work ethic, so you know what they’re capable of and feel confident they can rise to new challenges
If employees are rewarded and promoted, they are more likely to remain loyal to your business long-term, reducing costly staff turnover
Retraining programmes are becoming critical to survival in some industries; increasing use of technology is changing the skills required to help businesses thrive, and the World Economic Forum predicts that up to 40% of employees will need to reskill in future

These factors underline the benefits of employee reskilling schemes and their necessity. Firms that fail to utilise their current workforce may find talented staff leaving for more dynamic job opportunities that offer greater flexibility, learning opportunities and career progression.

How to successfully reskill existing staff

There’s a strong business case for reskilling over recruitment. But companies need to invest in properly resourced programmes to ensure internal development drives longer-term success.

A quick, effective way to start a new reskilling programme is to carry out an audit of your current employees’ skillsets and create an online HR record listing their professional capabilities, qualifications and certifications. Formalising this process and creating a central register of your complete talent base makes it easy to identify suitable candidates within your business when a new role or responsibility arises.

Once you’ve logged employee skills on their HR records, you can use that knowledge to improve your productivity and workload distribution. And many businesses find an effective way to coordinate this is through online task planning and management tools.

Cross-referencing staff skills with regular operational requirements allows you to allocate the most appropriate team member to each task. While some jobs are straightforward and anyone can complete them, others require specialist knowledge and capabilities.

Keeping an online HR record lets you identify appropriate people for more senior or specialised tasks (upskilling more staff if necessary), ensuring someone is always available to take on essential responsibilities.

Managing your reskilled workforce

As we discussed at length in WhosOffice’s recent ebook, 7 Steps to Simplify your Flexible Working Set-Up, many businesses want to increase their agility but find it hard to manage the practicalities. Even if you can audit staff skills and align task delegation with people’s capabilities, rostering people with the right talent mix is an ongoing challenge.

One way that successful businesses overcome this obstacle is through employee shift planning tools. By integrating daily headcounts with task planning and management facilities, your organisation can make sure the right balance of staff are available for the demands of each shift – without resorting to overstaffing.

By automating shift planning, you can redistribute all roles and responsibilities as your firm expands. So staff have an opportunity to develop their talents into new areas without compromising the foundations of your business success.

WhosOffice empowers companies to manage staff better through our online shift management software. The WhosOffice platform includes built-in features such as task planning, HR management and e-rostering so that you can maximise the value of every single staff member.