The COVID-19 pandemic has been a period of significant professional disruption around the globe, not just for frontline workers who are spending long hours in harm’s way, but also for office workers who have spent these months trying to adapt to a new way of doing business.
Indeed, as many were stressed during the early months of the crisis, as workers highlighted the sudden difficulties of working from home, this is not the norm for remote work. It’s attempting to work at home during a pandemic – a stressful experience that’s unlike any other and which presented challenges even to seasoned remote workers. Still, even as workers navigated an unprecedented situation, many looked at this strange time and saw an opportunity: time to upskill.
Upskilling may seem like something of a buzzword in today’s professional environment, with some describing the practice as “futureproofing” careers or economies, but the practice makes a great deal of sense. Workers who pursue new skills aren’t just able to advance within their careers as they exist now, but are prepared to pivot and adapt to whatever comes next, which is a skill in itself. Particularly for those in tech-centered industries, change is constant, and new skills are critical to staying relevant. Most importantly, those workers using this moment of disruption to develop new skills will be ready for a post-pandemic environment – whatever that may look like.
Confronting The Skills Gap
While many upskilling efforts are about advance preparation for what may eventually be demanded of workers, it’s important that businesses and individual workers first confront the existing skill gap. In fact, in one survey of UK workers, as many as a third don’t feel they perform as well as they could in their roles because they lack the necessary IT skills. That’s because many of the technical skills considered critical in today’s workplaces aren’t taught in schools, but also aren’t thought of as so niche that offices feel the need to train staff in them.
How can workers develop these critical, but overlooked skills during the pandemic? One option is to take targeted courses that address problem areas, such as a leveled class on Excel skills. Excel is extraordinarily useful, especially in areas like finance, but it’s also the part of the Microsoft Office suite that most people know the least about. Those who hold the status of office Excel guru carry a heavy burden.
Know Where You’re Going
Not everyone is in a position where they need to backtrack and fill in skills gaps, and these workers should consider taking their pandemic time away from conventional office tasks to focus on where they’re going. Is the goal to climb the ladder within their organization, to change fields, or something else? Do they know what skills are in demand? Given the shape and direction of the economy, many workers have chosen to take coding classes so that they can do software and application development work. This is a smart move, but it’s not for everyone, and because there are so many coding languages, it’s important to choose the right one for the job.
Another approach to upskilling and reskilling takes an entrepreneurial angle, often inspired by life in the current restricted environment. Workers who had been putting off a dream business or who always wanted to try their hand at building a startup are contending with the reality that there’s no time to waste. Reskilling and upskilling represent pathways to startup development, or at least to higher earning jobs.
A Pandemic Perspective Shift
Though plenty of workers have found the COVID-19 pandemic to be a busy time in their industries, for those sensing a lag, upskilling or reskilling could be the perfect way to fill the time and prepare for the future. Given our global awareness that things can change in an instant, every worker should be prepared to change lanes at a moment’s notice. Though many will never use them, or won’t need new skills for years, others will find themselves in precarious situations as the global economy works to recover – and it’s hard to know who, so it’s best to be prepared.
