Back in the day (read: pre-ChatGPT, pre-2023 tech layoffs, pre-COVID), many knowledge workers followed a predictable path.
Accumulating new knowledge happened in a T-shape, like this:
Let’s take a marketer as an example. As a new hire, they decided to specialize in content marketing. Over the course of their next few roles, they became an expert on search engine optimization (SEO), getting certified in content automation, and taking a course on content marketing strategy. Their upskilling efforts eventually paid off, and they were promoted to a senior content marketing role in the same company.
That was—and still is—a perfectly fine way to approach career development.
But these days, the people who set themselves apart have more of an M-shaped knowledge profile, like this:
In this scenario, our marketer still specializes in content marketing out of the gate. But instead of learning everything there is to know about content marketing (and calling it good), they consider what skills they’d need to create a career path with a broader scope—via reskilling.
They might see their biggest chance to make an impact overlaps with an emerging need for someone who can:
To fulfill those needs and achieve mastery in more than one domain, our marketer will need to reskill—and go through the process of learning how to do an entirely different job.
In this guide, we’ll go beyond defining reskilling and explain:
If you looked at your LinkedIn feed right now, how many posts would be about ChatGPT?
If you answered “north of 90%,” you aren’t alone. 🤖 To say artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment doesn’t quite do things justice.
Depending on your personal outlook, these stats may be alarming, exciting, or both.
What’s equally 🤯, no matter where you sit ? The 97 million new jobs experts estimate will be created due to AI.
That means the best time to talk about reskilling and retraining was yesterday, and the second best time is today.
While we’ve yet to come across a job description for a ChatGPT prompt writer, it’s only a matter of time. Innovations in AI are advancing at warp speed—and changing which skills are most in-demand just as quickly.
What should forward-thinking founders and employees both be thinking about?
How to adapt to meet market demands, yes. But also: the fastest way to enable—and action—continuous learning.
If acquiring and applying new knowledge is the key to long-term resilience, the (20+!) benefits to reskilling shouldn’t be underestimated.
Reskilling Advantages
Whether you’re a knowledge worker in a role that may be phased out or a functional manager looking for ways for your existing team to create more value, some degree of reskilling and retraining is likely in your future.
So what’s the best way to lean in and get a jump on the inevitable transitions ahead?
We’ve talked about identifying skill gaps before, while explaining how to stand up an upskilling program. It’s equally foundational here.
To get started, first think about the knowledge gaps that are [already] all too clear. Then think about which areas of the business are likely to have the greatest need over the next 3-5 years.
Consider questions like:
You can do this individually or with others. The key? Keeping an open mind.
This topic of conversation isn’t the easiest—but knowing that the goal of reskilling is to equip existing team members with the skills to succeed in a different role can help create some psychological safety.
To guide the conversation in a group setting, you might ask questions like:
Note: Changing “jobs to be done” may be one outcome of digital transformation and AI for knowledge workers. But in many cases, roles may not be eliminated altogether. For example—a customer support rep may no longer handle as many Tier 1 tickets, but could be responsible for auditing the Tier 1 automation and creating more help content to drive self-service.
Steps #1 (desired skills) and #2 (obsolete jobs to be done) should give you a good starting point for assessing how you can most effectively leverage your existing team.
Some career transitions may be synergistic, with clearly transferable skills. For example—say you need to make a change in Sales, and you know there’s a Business Development Representative (BDR) who creates all of her own prospecting materials and has a great pulse on customer pain points. She might be a logical addition to the marketing team, and be uniquely equipped to help bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales.
Other transitions may be more of a stretch (and a harder sell). Say you need to double-down on improving your customer experience, and with the introduction of ChatGPT, you don’t need as many full-time content writers. Being retrained to succeed in a customer-facing role may not be your writer’s first choice—but it would give him a way to maintain his income, and a way for you to speed up the onboarding process for a more mission-critical role.
The success of your reskilling program hinges on the success of your reskilling strategies.
E-learning. Job shadowing. Cross-functional training. Since reskilling methods mirror the best practices for training new hires and upskilling employees pretty closely, we won’t run through them all in detail here.
Interested in our top two recommendations for closing the gap between learning and applying? Check out these posts on learning on the job and microlearning.
Want to help people capture and access knowledge in the flow of work?
At the risk of stating the obvious—change is hard. And it’s even harder when it’s happening *to* you, it feels like you don’t have much of a say, and the silver linings aren’t immediately obvious.
To handle all reskilling conversations with care, create a plan to give people as much information—and agency—as you can.
A few tips for each one-on-one:
It may be tempting to think of reskilling as a one-time tactic. But it’s far more effective to create a culture of continuous learning and collaboration.
After all, new technology is going to continue to take off. Business models we can’t imagine now are going to take center stage. Opportunities to increase productivity through automation are going to keep appearing. Consumer behaviors are going to continue to change. Roles and responsibilities are going to remain in constant flux.
The companies that can adapt to change the fastest are the ones that will survive. And the people with the most well-rounded capabilities (who can step into new or expanded roles in less time) are the ones who will thrive.
When was the last time you started a job without learning any new technology?
For many, learning new software is the biggest hurdle to developing deep subject matter expertise in a new domain (and the hardest part of going from a T-shaped learner to an M-shaped learner).
That’s why we see software as the gateway to reskilling for most knowledge workers. It’s next to impossible to master the most important and impactful parts of a new career without first learning how to navigate all the systems that come with it.
Say you’re switching from a marketing role to a sales role, and your company uses Salesforce for customer relationship management. Until you understand all the tasks you need to perform in Salesforce, it’ll be hard for you to focus on much beyond gaining basic competence in the tool.
So how can you raise your floor faster?
By finding a way to:
Would you believe us if we said we had just the thing? 😁
Learning new software is clearly one (significant) obstacle to reskilling. What else should you keep an eye out for?
Common Reskilling Challenges
Looking for the top three takeaways?
With as many benefits for employees as there are for employers, a six-step framework to reskill your workforce, and ideas to overcome the top five reskilling obstacles, there’s no reason not to embrace a new, more agile way of working now.
Both upskilling and reskilling refer to the process of learning new skills, but with different end goals. Upskilling aims to improve job performance in the same role, whereas reskilling intends to tee up a successful transition into an entirely different job or career.
Here are a few examples of reskilling in the workplace:
We'll never show up
empty-handed (how rude!).
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