Designing a Successful Reskilling Program | Harvard Business Review

Upskilling and reskilling are top priorities for many organizations, and this new article from Harvard Business Review discusses six paradigms with key questions to help overcome challenges in reskilling initiatives. This follow-up to “Reskilling in the Age of AI,” shares results from a reskilling survey conducted with chief human resources officers from approximately 1,200 U.S. organizations and 200 business leaders, revealing that 56% of respondents report active reskilling efforts. Despite these efforts, challenges remain, highlighting the need for continuous improvement. For example, one paradigm focuses on measuring the impact of reskilling efforts, proposing questions about whether reskilling pilots have been set up before scaling, if there are robust sets of practical and strategic key performance indicators (KPIs), and if the right stakeholders are reviewing these KPIs frequently enough to make timely adjustments to the program. As practitioners determine how they will measure the impact of reskilling efforts, I am resharing the BCG article, Is Your Upskilling Program Paying Off?, which highlights various metrics for assessing the impact of learning and reskilling programs. In addition to end-state metrics, I recommend incorporating “mini indicators” to help measure directional progress throughout shorter intervals (e.g., months 1-2, 3-6, 9, etc).