3 tips from Amazon Web Services for employers who wish to upskill their staff

As the US economy recovers from the impact of the pandemic, employers are still struggling to fully staff amid the supposed labor shortage. A potential way to combat this hiring issue is to upskill and retrain current employees. According to a study done by Gallup, upskilling and retraining can be a powerful tool to attract new talent and is a highly desired benefit for workers.

College Recruiter recently asked experts for tips for employers who wish to upskill their employees.

Here are 3 tips from Kevin Kelly, Director of Cloud Career Training Programs at Amazon Web Services.

1. Establish an executive sponsor and identify champions. 

Companies that prioritize a cultural change by investing in their people and operating processes can achieve transformative business impacts much more quickly. This cultural change starts at the top and requires vocal executive sponsorship. The executive sponsor should be someone at the highest level who can communicate the company’s vision, obtain buy-in and alignment across the leadership team, and set an aggressive top-down goal that forces the organization to move faster than it would organically. The sponsor and other leaders ensure training goals are aligned to broader business goals across your organization, so the strategy is integrated and aligned at all levels. They need to communicate a clear direction and expectations with the rest of the organization. 

Acknowledge the skilled professionals in your organization and encourage them to act as mentors and coaches to others. Create a process and structure to empower these champions to drive employee learning programs. This helps build leadership opportunities for your champions-while creating additional mechanisms for employee growth-creating a continuously revolving flywheel of growth and opportunity for the organization. Don’t forget to build your champions from across the organization in diverse roles—not just managers or senior individuals—and invite their input and give them permission to lead. In doing so, you’ll create an employee-led movement that aids in greater staff retention and satisfaction. 

2. Institutionalize your skilling culture. 

Incorporate employee skills development into the company’s annual goals—tied to leadership’s performance metrics and each employee’s goals—to establish operational rigor that substantiates your desired culture. Consider specific strategic and operational imperatives that align to skilling gaps, as well as industry certification achievements that can bolster new business wins. Managers should have an open and continuous dialogue with employees to align skills development and industry credentials to the individual’s current role and their short- and long-term career path. Institutionalizing skill building from the very top of the organization ensures the culture is intentional about ongoing learning and curiosity. For example, at Amazon we’re committing more than $1.2 billion to provide free education and skills training opportunities to more than 300,000 of our own employees in the U.S. to help them secure new, high-growth jobs. 

3. Encourage dedicated time for skills development. 

For a culture of learning to take hold, it’s vital for leaders and managers to bake-in skill development time into their timelines and milestones so that they can achieve priority objectives for their team and organization. Empower employees to dedicate time during the work week to prioritize learning and build their skills. Employees need to feel the organization’s commitment to making space for learning so they feel confident setting daily responsibilities aside to pursue their skills development. In our organization, we have “No Meeting Friday,” set aside to allow time and space for employees to take training, delve into a topic of interest or passion, and/or to connect with a mentor/mentee. Learners of various skill levels, roles, and backgrounds can build knowledge and practical skills using an extensive library of live classroom training and more than 500 free online courses, which are part of Amazon’s commitment to help 29 million people around the world grow their tech skills with free cloud computing skills training by 2025.