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How to Leverage Different Options for Building Skills

Seth Robinson

Midway through the decade, one of the defining economic themes has been investment in technology. Throughout the previous decade, organizations progressed through a cultural shift from tactical IT to strategic IT. The pandemic accelerated this process, with most companies pursuing more aggressive technology adoption in the post-pandemic era in order to bring the benefits of digital transformation to their long-term objectives.

What goes up must come down, and several factors have tempered the ravenous appetite for digital tools, services, and skills. First and foremost, organizations began questioning the return on their investments. This was not broad skepticism of technology’s value, but rather standard operational practice around understanding the cost/benefit equation. This desire to define success metrics for technology coincided with other events—rising interest rates, uncertainty around global business stability, and workforce reductions—to slow the pace of technology spending.

Economics is different from the law of gravity, though, and what comes down is highly likely to go up again. Digital transformation is not a flash in the pan, and the constant evolution of AI and other technology trends ensures that there will always be a cutting edge where organizations can maximize value. In order to realize these benefits over the long term, leaders must keep their team’s skills current, balancing three different methods for skill development.

Upskilling: Deepening expertise within a job family

The most common skill-building method is upskilling, where individuals build additional skills along a career pathway closely related to their current job role. Although upskilling is a longstanding element of career development and can largely be done on the job, two features of the tech skills landscape compel leaders to plan strategically in this area.

First, the technology workforce has become more varied. The fields of cybersecurity and data have joined the more traditional fields of tech support, infrastructure, and software development. In addition, each of these fields has incredible depth, with many organizations fielding highly specialized individuals to focus on niche applications.

Related to the first topic, there is a growing need for organizations to define career pathways, including the skills needed to advance. Nowhere is this more evident than IT support, where careers can now branch into any of the other disciplines instead of being mostly relegated to IT infrastructure. A robust upskilling strategy will reflect the many pathways a tech worker can take and clearly outline the skills needed to reach the next step.

Reskilling: Reimagining talent for new roles

The recent shortfall of available technical talent has led to the rise of reskilling as another skill-building option. There will always be changes in economic conditions or business priorities that change the desired makeup of the workforce; in many cases it is advantageous to retain workers with knowledge of the organization and industry who may already have many of the skills needed for a new job role.

One of the most prominent examples for reskilling potential is in the field of data, which is the most recent addition to the focused domains within technology. As organizations have chased new forms of data analytics for competitive advantage, they have learned that many new data skills are needed. Some of these are highly technical in nature, such as database administration or data mining. Other skills, however, blend institutional knowledge with data acumen to produce insights and visualizations that drive decisions. Many firms have found success in reskilling individuals from throughout the organization to become data analysts.

Cross-skilling: Expanding capability across functions

The final possibility when crafting a strategic skill development plan is cross-skilling. This approach seeks to arm individual workers with the skills needed to be functional across multiple disciplines. At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than the pendulum swinging back to teams of generalists after a period of investment in highly specialized roles. Unsurprisingly, the full picture is not quite so simple.

Enterprise technology is far more complex today than it was even five years ago. Different trends like cloud and now AI provide layers of abstraction that can hide this complexity, but that abstraction breaks down as systems need to be integrated and automated. It is too much to expect a single individual to adequately cover all parts of a highly complex architecture.

Beyond this technical complexity, the shift toward strategic IT has highlighted the need for senior technical staff to be well versed in the language and objectives of the organization. This introduces another potential facet for cross-skilling, as technical staff have to become more proficient in business concepts and effective communication.

Cross-skilling should not be seen only as a reactionary move in the face of workforce reduction. At times, there will certainly be a need to have staff shoulder new responsibilities. Ideally, though, cross-skilling is a proactive piece of the skill development puzzle which can be leveraged more heavily if required.

Building strong talent pipelines has become a critical activity, not only for technical leaders but also for HR professionals and executive management. As organizations build out a skills-based approach to career development and technology investment, the three methods of upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling will each play a part in future-proofing the workforce.

By committing to continuously building and refreshing the skills of your team, you ensure not only personal growth but also the long-term resilience and effectiveness of your team. At CompTIA, we are dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations to thrive amid constant change.

Connect with our team to explore how we can partner together to assess your current capabilities and discuss a skills development strategy. Let’s work together to future-proof your workforce and seize new opportunities as technology continues to advance.