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Upskilling involves supporting employees to improve or develop their skills. It’s not the same as reskilling, which is more about completely retraining employees to fill a different role.
The practice of upskilling is becoming increasingly useful for charities facing budget pressures and skills shortages, as it allows organisations to save on recruitment costs and also contributes to better employee retention. Employees feel valued and more engaged in their career development, while the overall workforce often sees improved productivity and long-term performance.
An effective upskilling strategy requires careful planning and patience to see the full benefits come to fruition for your charity. Our guide takes you through the main steps of upskilling, and explains when external hiring may be more suitable.
- Assess skills of the current workforce
- Conduct a skills gap analysis
- Set objectives for acquiring new skills
- Engage current employees in their development
- Implement a training programme to upskill workers
- Look to hire for specialist skill
Benefits of adding new skills to the workforce
Potential blockers for upskilling
Upskilling FAQs
1. Assess skills of the current workforce
Before you can upskill your employees, you need to know what skills they already have. Spend time auditing the skills, strengths, and experiences of each team across the organisation, and how these are being put to use.
- Hard skills: Speak to team leaders about the technical skills unique to their specialisms to ensure you capture those you may not be familiar with in your day-to-day work. Find out which skills each team has and how they are currently being applied.
- Soft skills: Essential skills such as teamwork and communication are just as important as technical skills and should also be considered during your audit.
A quick and efficient way to gather information about each person’s skills is to send employees a questionnaire with skills-based questions. These questionnaires can be used by your team and employees as a reference in the future to track how skills develop.
At this stage, you’re not trying to work out what’s missing or solve the skills shortage, but simply to take stock of the skills and strengths your organisation currently has.
2. Conduct a skills gap analysis
After you have established what skills your workforce currently possesses, you can move on to identify what skills are missing in your organisation by conducting a skills gap analysis.
- Outline objectives for your charity, ensuring these are measurable to allow you to see a clear path to the skills needed to achieve them.
- Use the skills assessments gathered in the first step to compare current workforce capabilities against the needs and goals of your charity.
- Identify crucial gaps that could impact performance, growth, and your mission.
The outcome of a skills gap analysis should provide clear insight into where skills can be improved at the individual, team and organisational levels.
3. Set objectives for acquiring new skills
Once you have a clear view of the skills your workforce holds and what it’s missing, you’ll be able to establish which skills need to be introduced – and, most importantly, why.
Throughout your initial assessment, you should have identified any missing skills. For example, there may be a need for specific skills in emerging technologies, stronger leadership capabilities, or cross-sector experience to bring your charity to its next stage of evolution.
It’s all well and good knowing which skills are missing, but to have the greatest impact on growth or on your charity’s impact, prioritisation is necessary.
An effective way to prioritise where to focus on upskilling is to set out measurable objectives and success criteria against which you can map skills. The exact targets will depend on your current and desired skills and charity goals, but could include:
- employee performance,
- retention rates,
- internal promotions and new roles,
- new projects and outcomes,
- stronger mission impacts.
4. Engage current employees in their development
Not every employee needs to acquire every missing skill. Some people are better suited to particular skill sets, and others may have a special interest they’d love the opportunity to develop.
Speak to employees about their interests and goals to understand potential development opportunities and progression pathways. Employees are the ones who will put their newly acquired skills to good use, so it’s only natural that they be involved in planning and shaping their own learning goals and new skills.
When employees are able to have a voice and personal involvement in their development, their continued participation and overall career satisfaction are more likely to lead to successful upskilling implementation.
5. Implement a training programme to upskill workers
Following careful planning and goal setting, it’s time to put upskilling into practice. To do this, you’ll need time and a budget to fund training.
Find out what learning and development budget you have available – and secure more with a strong business case for upskilling if you need to. A well-structured development plan requires employees to have dedicated time to learn. Managers and senior leadership should be encouraged to provide their teams with the availability and space to develop their skills.
There’s no single training that will provide all the skills you need, and you’ll have to explore various learning methods that suit employee learning styles and your available budget. Training could include:
- professional qualifications and certifications,
- mentoring and peer-to-peer learning,
- online learning courses,
- in-person training and workshops,
- job shadowing and internal mobility prospects.
6. Look to hire for specialist skills
Upskilling can only take your charity so far. There may be scenarios where it’s better to explore skills-based hiring rather than train an existing team member.
For example, desirable skills missing from charities that can only be gained through significant time spent in a particular industry or role types, such as digital transformation. Something this specialised would require an existing employee with no prior experience to be entirely retrained. This level of reskilling would take significant time and resources, and ultimately it’d be far more efficient to hire externally.
The cost-benefit balance also needs to be considered. We all know charities have limited budgets, and every penny spent needs to count. With research indicating charities lose around £28m each year due to inefficient staff training, the budget could be put to better use by finding a talented new employee.
Hiring skilled talent from outside your organisation can be the perfect complement to internal development, bringing entirely new skill sets into the workforce and bolstering upskilling efforts across your team.
Benefits of adding new skills to the workforce
Whether new skills are brought into your workforce through upskilling or hiring new talent, your charity can use them to take leaps and bounds into moving your mission forward.
Through internal upskilling
Continuous learning in the nonprofit sector is key to preventing charities from falling behind, allowing your passionate workforce to continue contributing to good. There are countless other benefits for your employees and organisation, such as:
- Improved employee retention and engagement,
- Greater productivity and organisational resilience,
- Reduced reliance on external hiring,
- Stronger employer brand and employee value proposition.
Through hiring externally
Welcoming people from a range of backgrounds, careers and sectors allows your charity to take advantage of previously untapped skills and ideas.
- Career shifters offer brand new perspectives and transferable skills.
- People with emerging skills can help your charity adapt more easily to changing conditions.
- Candidates with particular hard skills can quickly fill technical roles without additional training.
Potential blockers for upskilling
Upskilling sounds easy in principle, but in practice, there are likely to be blockers that restrict or halt progress. But, where there’s a problem, there’s always a solution to be found.
| Potential upskilling challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Limited learning and development budget |
|
| Lack of time available to spend on training |
|
| Low employee motivation, engagement or participation |
|
| Difficulty measuring the impact of upskilling |
|
Upskilling FAQs
What is the difference between upskilling and reskilling?
- Upskilling is when an organisation helps employees develop new skills to enhance their existing role, progress their current career path, or fill a skills gap in the organisation.
- Reskilling involves retraining employees to move into a completely different role, often in response to changing organisational needs or emerging skills.
While reskilling and upskilling are similar, they are different but can complement each other to develop a strong and skilled workforce.
How to know if an upskilling initiative has been successful?
Upskilling has long-term benefits that can be difficult to measure immediately, but those who signed off on the initiative will want to know how it’s progressing and the value it’s bringing to the charity. You can measure:
- Short-term metrics, such as training course attendance, employee participation and feedback.
- Long-term outcomes, including improved employee performance and retention rates, internal promotions and a reduced skills gap. For example, a charity that was struggling with leadership capabilities might see more employees become successful managers following management training.
- Progress against organisational goals set out at the start of the upskilling plan. For example, training on digital skills could lead to more efficient data reporting, or contemporary fundraising resulting in stronger campaign performance.
Should my charity upskill employees or hire externally?
Whether you upskill or hire will depend on the types of skills and speed at which they’re needed within the charity.
Focusing on internal development may be more appropriate when employees have strong organisational knowledge.
External recruitment could be more effective when your charity needs specialist skills soon, but they don’t exist within the current organisation and the time and cost taken to upskill will significantly outweigh the time it’d take to hire a new team member. For example, if your charity is launching a major CRM transformation project and the necessary digital skills aren’t present within the existing workforce, a candidate from a tech company in the private sector could have the necessary transferable skills to guide the charity through.
Find candidates with the skills you need with CharityJob
While many skills can be developed by upskilling existing employees, strategic recruiting is sometimes the quickest and most efficient way to attract talent with the skills you need for the strongest workforce.
Post a job with CharityJob Apply and get free access to our end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tools , designed to help you find the skills your workforce is missing. Our ATS allows you to filter CVs with keyword searches, set up screening questions and identify candidates with the skills you need more efficiently.
We offer four job ad packages to suit your needs and budget. Choosing the right package is important because it determines the pool size, type and quality of candidates your ad will reach.
If you’re not sure which is right for your non-profit organisation, contact us for personalised advice. Give us a call on 020 8939 8430, or email us at info@charityjob.co.uk
Tags: charity recruitment, employee development, employee engagement, HR practices, staff retention, supporting your team, training and development
