Why it’s time to throw out old upskilling playbooks

Great companies run on great talent. As companies evolve to manage their growth, making sure the right people are in the right jobs should be part of the conversation. Declarations like, “the war for talent is over and talent won,” or “companies now have the upper hand in hiring” are just distractions from the core issue: How company leaders can help create opportunities for employees to do great work. The more energy acting on that issue, the more opportunity for companies to be successful. Investing in people brings great rewards, but not investing in talent can fail them.

Every employee has greatness in them and it’s the obligation of the organization to ensure they create an environment where people can do great work and continue to grow. But that’s not easy, especially now. This is a time of radical social, technological, economic and political change.

When employees bring their whole selves to work, they’re also bringing what they are experiencing outside of work. This confluence of upheaval is taking its toll on the American worker. According to a recent study, employee happiness has reached a four-year low, which survey authors attribute to inflation and financial woes, inconsistent return-to-office policies, evolving employee expectations and layoffs.

Start with respect

The playbooks chief human resource officers and chief learning officers have been using may be obsolete. Instead, start at something basic that employees are saying they want: respect. Meet people where they are as people. Recognize that beyond capabilities and skills, they have hopes and dreams. Ask yourself how you best create an environment where this person can do great work in service of something bigger than themselves. If that’s not your playbook in 2024, now is an ideal time to consider an update.

An important enabler to doing great work is having a well-rounded workforce. In this environment of constant change, companies can benefit from placing a high value on people who are curious and multifaceted. Whether an employee is in an entry-level role or holds the most sophisticated and complex role in the organization, people who are curious better serve the cause. Nurturing a curious mindset is one of the best things a company can do for employees and an individual can do for themselves as they develop in a career.

At UScellular, we work hard to create opportunities for people to grow and we encourage skills development in numerous ways, both formal and informal. For example, the leader of our financial services team supports developing talent in the larger organization. That team has built a path for associates who have aspirations for higher-level leadership to move into other areas of the business such as FP&A, strategy and even supply chain and marketing, so they can develop a new perspective and perhaps think differently about strategy. We focus on getting people into different jobs where they learn by doing, and those experiences build a foundation to become higher-level leaders. It can be a little uncomfortable, but it gives employees a much broader perspective. An interesting and historic footnote – moving employees to non-traditional spots is how 3M invented Post-It Notes.

Challenge employees to think like a leader

A page in our playbook includes teaching every level of the organization how leaders think. Helping people evolve in the way a leader thinks creates an opportunity to grow. When employees have a leadership mindset, it helps them become lifelong learners. People can do projects all day but involving them to jointly solve a problem with a mentor or team can be the best skill builder of all. Once a person tackles the intellectual challenge of solving something that’s ambiguous and outside their comfort zone, that will help them develop the thinking often involved in leadership roles. 

During my time leading UScellular’s IT organization, I helped foster an emerging leaders program for associates to develop leadership skills and make the jump from individual contributor to leader of people. The 12-week program connected associates with leaders across the company, where these leaders shared their unique paths to leadership. Of the approximately 70 associates who went through the program, about 35 percent were eventually promoted, and the framework was subsequently adopted across the organization.

A key approach to skilling at our company is to foster an environment in which people can articulate what they need and what best serves them. That inspires a generative dialogue starting with what they already know—an important first step to identifying new skills that they can get, build or buy to become more effective in their job. We also pursue a range of more traditional, formal approaches to skilling, such as online coursework, tuition reimbursement, mentoring and reverse mentoring. I do regular reverse mentoring with my team and always walk away with helpful insights that challenge my thinking. 

Given the current hybrid working environment, teaching the next generation of leaders can be challenging when the opportunities to interact may not be in-person. It’s important to build and maintain loose networks of support. Creating relationships with members from other teams can also improve the quality of conversations and help shift perspectives to view problems in a different way. Bringing outside experiences can contribute to more satisfying work outcomes and can be a catalyst for innovation. 

Measure success through dialogue

Because analytics is a cornerstone of assessing effectiveness, we assess aspects such as upward mobility within the company and retention rates. More difficult to measure but no less important is the quality of the dialogue among enterprise leaders. Those who have moved around think differently and have different experiences bringing a richer set of voices into the dialogue. 

My own career path at UScellular is an example of these principles. I became the chief people officer after 20 years in technology leadership. I’m someone who was believed in and I was shown the possibilities to achieve great things. Imagine the multiplier effect if each of us can do that for one or two people—helping each employee realize their greatness is always worth the work.