The Secrets of Successfully Upskilling and Reskilling Your People

  • Upskilling and reskilling are key concerns in organizations today, made more important by the advent of AI
  • But very few know how to do it, and many companies struggle with it
  • The process can be made more successful with appropriate personalisation for individual learners and job roles, but few know how to achieve that.
  • Martec's Upskilling and Reskilling Blueprint will tell you how to plan it and manage its execution to a successful steady state conclusion with a quantified return on investment.
  • Our examples will focus on retailing and consumer goods because that’s Martec’s core competence.  But you can use this model in any industry.
  • Our goal is that when you need someone in a role, you have people ready to be promoted because they have been trained for the role already.

Part 1

Martec International has developed an Upskilling and Reskilling Blueprint to address how you and your company can do this successfully. The blueprint has three main phases:

  • Provisioning everthing you need to launch a successful project.
  • Building a quantified plan.
  • Executing the plan.

The blueprint kit includes:

  • Three approximately 20-minute videos giving a detailed overview of the methodology.
  • A range of templates to use during provisioning, planning and implementation
  • A time-based spreadsheet based planning model which can be used for pilot projects or complete company upskilling projects 
  • A spreadsheet based comporehensive return on investment model which can be used initially to esimate the investment cost and the return on investment in the project.  Subsequently, it can be used in the execution phase to check that the benefits are being achieved, or to identify any gaps and rectify them.
  • An e-learning return on investment class to help those not too familiar with comprehemsive return on investment modelling.
  • A detailed written guide to the methodology to help step you through the project.  This document includes a guide to how to incorporate personalisation both for the company and individual learners.

In addition to the blueprint, Martec can supply a complete portfolio of classes and other learning interventions, plus optional learning management software.  We do not supply "horizontal" training classes, such as leadership development, critical thinking skills, etc., but many suppliers do and Martec is happy to work with them to achieve the right result.  This becomes potentially important in the personalisation for the company concerned.

Most providers of learning solutions and company L&D departments struggle with demonstrating the return on investment for projects of this nature.  Martec is happy to demonstrate its approach which is based on many years of consulting experience which involved developing ROI models for myuch more expensive projects such as implementing SAP Retail and Microsoft Dynamics retail solutions.

Our secret is that we have a one to one mapping between each job role and its associated learning path. (More about this later).  For example, in the case of store merchandisers, the selected KPIs might include % availability on store shelves and the weeks cover held in each store for a specifc department, depending on what the company's systems can support. These KPIs can be estimated initially if no history exists and then tracked through implementation. Department by department, you can review the change in average inventory over time and see whether it is achieving the planned reduction.  If not, the level of granularity in the ROI model allows forensic analysis of the data to see where the problem is and what needs to be addressed.

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Part 2

The complete planning model including:

  • Key data to make it work on things like external and internal attrition, business growth plans, etc
  • Forecasting the number of people need in each job role next year and subsequently
  • Determining the number to be resourced by external recruitment and those to be grown internally
  • Forecasting the number of internal promotions needed in each job role, and when they are needed based on business goals
  • Assigning learning paths to upskill people in each impacted role
  • Tracking learner progress to ensure that targets will be achieved
  • Assessing the impact on business KPIs and estimating the return on investment
  • Making sure you achieve the plan.

Part 3

What else do you need to insure success?

  • Systems infrastructure
  • Change management plan and resources
  • Learner motivation tools
  • What to do if you don’t have everything in house.

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