# L&D Words of the Moment: Upskilling and Reskilling

L&D Words of the Moment: Upskilling and Reskilling[Skip to content](#content)

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- [By Akash Savdharia](https://www.getbridge.com/author/akash-savdharia/)
- Talent Mobility
- April 30, 2021

##### Table of Contents

March 2020. Businesses are undergoing a seismic shift as they are forced to send workers home. They have two options: give up, or invest heavily in upskilling and reskilling.

It’s story time. We’re in the land of fiction, but our British readers will likely hear the clanging of a bell, reminding them of scandalous news stories of wealthy friends of politicians being awarded unusual contracts! Imagine you’re back in March 2020. The words ‘furlough’, ‘hand sanitiser’ and ‘the R-rate’ are starting to become part of your daily language. Businesses are undergoing a seismic shift as they are forced to send workers home, introduce Covid-secure practices, and operate in a world in shock.

The airline industry is nearly grounded. Large industrial and engineering businesses tied up in the once bustling world of flight are as flightless as a once-soaring coastal bird in an oil-spill. They have two options: give up, or change tack. One such organisation spots an opportunity: the growing demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). They have manufacturing lines. They have functional international logistics and supply chains. They don’t have the skills.

What do they do?

Suspend your political arguments about how to best spend taxpayer money, and consider this only from the perspective of the individual business. Through upskilling and reskilling, by shifting their operations enormously, the business just took what could have been disaster and turned it into resounding success.

Even without such dramatic oil-spill level struggles, and catalytic changes in approach, all businesses need to turn their attention to up-skilling and re-skilling right now.

#### **Definitions, Definitions**

Upskilling is adding an extra layer of skills to what you have in your repertoire already. It’s the mastery to your foundational knowledge. Reskilling is equipping yourself with totally new skills which enable you to transition to success in something totally different from what you were doing before.

Even before Covid, both were essential for organisations to manage the growing skills shortages being experienced across many sectors.

But now, in a Covid-centric world, upskilling and reskilling are even more important.

#### **Mobilise Your Talent Base**

You have an existing talent base. What they may lack are the exact skills that you need to thrive in a Covid-centric world, and a post-pandemic future. If organisations can mobilise their existing talent, through upskilling and reskilling, which is considerably more cost-effective than new talent acquisition, then they have the potential for growth.

Chances are that your organisation has been doing this, without the complete 180° turn demonstrated in our fictional case study above. When your workforce went remote, reskilling and upskilling were par for the course. It may not have been done neatly or efficiently, but you’ve already witnessed it on the ground of your own company.

The trick now is to harness upskilling and reskilling with greater aplomb. It’s time to do it consciously, so that you can direct growth. It’s time to create the agile workforce that you actually need to embrace the future that’s coming.

Use the right performance and learning management tools to understand your people, so that you can identify areas for effective upskilling and reskilling. Encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration. Facilitate transition and foster engagement in doing things differently for everyone’s success in the long term.

It’s time to optimise the talent that you’ve got today for tomorrow’s opportunities. Business goals can be ambitious, even in testing times, when you realise the value of upskilling and reskilling the talent that you already have.

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Akash Savdharia is a high-growth product executive and SaaS product leadership expert with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of AI, Human Capital Management (HCM), and corporate learning. As the Bridge Talent Suite architect, he oversees the vision and execution of next-generation tools that help global enterprises transition into skills-based organizations. A vocal advocate for the skills-first revolution, Akash regularly consults with Forbes’s Global 2000 companies on shifting from rigid job descriptions to fluid skills-based architectures. Akash has also sat on an HR.com advisory board for expert insights on succession, internal mobility, and career development. Akash’s career is defined by his ability to solve complex, data-driven problems through technology. He’s widely recognized as an L&D thought leader for his work in pioneering AI-powered talent marketplaces and revolutionizing how companies approach internal mobility and employee retention. He was a first-mover in the AI-for-HR space. As the co-founder and CEO of Patheer, he developed one of the industry’s first AI-powered talent marketplaces. In 2020, Patheer was acquired by Learning Technologies Group (LTG).

##### Table of Contents

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