Upskilling Remote Staff: Advantages and Best Practices
This article aims to illustrate some advantages of upskilling remote staff and best practices for your upskilling strategy.
U.S. job listings are at a record-high at 9.2 million, but there are not enough job-takers. (MarketWatch)
In the 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the overall turnover rate is 57.3 %, but that number drops to 25% when considering only voluntary turnover, 29% when considering involuntary turnover, and just 3% when looking at only high-performers. (BLS-Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS)via Appolo Technical)
Outsourcing services to third-party providers with offshore teams helps solve the relevant challenge of staffing. In outsourcing you have access to a wide, highly specialized talent pool. Aside from solving the labor shortage through offshoring, businesses also regard upskilling as a priority and solution in a tight labor and fast-paced market.
Knowledge sharing and upskilling are among the top priorities of businesses and business process outsourcing providers. There are a lot of advantages to upskilling. It is a value-adding strategy that benefits all parties: the employee, the client, and the customer. Here are some advantages of upskilling remote staff and best practices for your upskilling strategy.
Upskilling Remote Staff contributes to Employee Engagement and Retention
Upskilling is an avenue for the professional career growth of remote staff. This can help boost employee engagement and increase retention.
In a 2021 workforce survey conducted by PwC of 32,500 workers, 77% want to upskill and are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain. 74% see training as a matter of personal responsibility.
According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report, 94 percent of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it simply invested in helping them learn. (CNBC)
Provide a Training Plan Tailored to your Remote Staff
The Remote Staffing Training Plan must have process documentation, manuals, training aids tailored to your remote staff to ensure a smooth and quality workflow and process alignment.
Careful assessment of performance reviews, real-time quality monitoring and weekly coaching sessions, ongoing feedback, employee motivation, ensure accuracy and quality of work of the team, and set timelines to achieve goals and further streamline business processes.
A detailed skills gap analysis for your remote staff is important in determining hiring, training and upskilling needs for your offshore team. This skills gap analysis is key in determining current roles or functions, required and priority functions or roles, existing workflows and processes, and how these existing workflows can still be improved through a detailed training plan.
Continuous coaching and mentoring
Constant feedback, focus group discussions with process updates and action plans allow for a more efficient workflow and allows for optimum employee and client experience. Each offshore team has an assigned service delivery manager to act as the dedicated point of contact of the client and is responsible in delivering client feedback and overseeing and managing the daily operations of the offshore team. Coaching and mentoring can be conducted in the following approaches: Ongoing feedback of client and service delivery manager, briefing of performance reviews and how to maintain or improve them, real-time quality monitoring and real-time monitoring and teach-back sessions. The following allow for a reasonable understanding to what the job is with productivity, utilization and quality metrics that need to be met on the part of the offshore team and allow for continued process improvement.
Integrate Knowledge Base and Learning Management Systems
Technology enables organizations to increase the efficiency of their operational processes, productivity, agility and scalability in operations. This is possible through process automation and data-driven reports and insights. With the help of technology, it is now possible for remote staff to collaborate through cloud-based platforms and Learning Management Platforms.
This is all possible with the help of a Learning Management System and Knowledge base. Learning Management Systems are useful in providing a centralized platform for upskilling remote staff. Integrate content such as training content, learning validation, course assessments and corresponding results in one platform. Learning Management Systems can cover courses such as professional curriculum, management curriculum, life skills and general learning.
A resource center, in-depth FAQs, insights database that is readily accessible are also helpful to aid in upskilling employees.
Train Employees with Connext Global Solutions
Businesses need a provider that conducts structured and effective hand-in-hand training with the client to ensure that all remote employees are able to work in the Client specific processes and thrive at their position.
Connext works through an onboarding checklist with the client which addresses resources such as system access, work schedule, quality plans, and training manuals. In the training lab, we give access to some of the training resources we use as well as some insight into how we train our employees for optimum results.
Connext Global Solutions provides excellent offshore staffing solutions that add value and unlock client growth. Learn more about the company’s custom Offshore Staffing solutions today.
