Empowering Your Frontline Employees with Training and Upskilling

Upskilling is a workplace trend. It facilitates additional education and training with advanced knowledge, time and resources. Studies have found that 52% of professionals with work experience of 6-8 years are upskilled in both 2021 and 2022 to help grow their careers.

A company invests in worker upskilling to help accomplish its goals and objectives in a highly efficient, quick, and productive manner. Your employees are also able to find new roles inside the company instead of a job switch.

There are multiple good reasons for empowering your employees with training and upskilling, especially for frontline blue-collared workers who live below poverty lines and have low-income backgrounds. For instance:

• Increases retention and engagement
• Addresses talent shortage in the firms
• Keeps them motivated and boosts their morale

Blue-collared workers are the essence of the Indian economy. The most glaring example was the 2020 pandemic when migrant workers fled COVID-hit cities in huge numbers and industries stood still.

Training such workers is extremely important in 2022 and beyond since the corona scare has forced digitisation and automation like never before. The country has an estimated 500 million workers classified as blue-collar as of 2022. Upskilling can help this ecosystem grow while fairly impacting the company profitability.

How Does Upskilling Boost Productivity?

A mobile-first micro-learning training platform can facilitate lifelong learning. This style mainly offers small 10-15 minutes videos that cover topics. Your workers sharpen their skills and stay relevant to meet the current industry standards.

Cutting edge technology based mobile solutions is short, fun and exciting. The blue-collared experts can benefit from daily quizzes and updates, contextual education and interactive noticeboards.

You can also engage the team with short-form content with simple surveys and contests. All of these can increase productivity since employees are enthusiastic about incorporating the newly learnt tools and techniques into their work.

Studies found that upskilling may increase employee engagement and retain social capital – both of which enhance productivity.

The Impact of Upskilling on Employee Morale

Workforce upskilling is not solely about polishing and upgrading existing skills. It can boost morale to a significant extent as well. A supportive work environment prioritising employee satisfaction and investing in wellness stands out from the crowd.

Trying to upskill workers also shows that you think they are capable of handling more responsibilities. It also tells them that their employer is willing to spend time and money for overall betterment.

Empowering your employees with training and upskilling helps them feel competent enough to tackle new challenges with a sense of purpose. You see more connected, active and united people which quickly spreads through the rest of the team.

What Skills are Ideal for Frontline Blue-Collar Workers?

Upskilling is a fantastic way to ensure leadership, collaboration, persistence and discipline. All of these are excellent soft skills that can pave the pathway to business advancement. It can also aid in specific blue-collar skills like:

Mechanical skills: Machinery knowledge like fixing a machine to keep it running.
Technical skills: Computer technology for organisational operations.
Physical ability: Strength and stamina for lifting, digging or exerting force.
Problem-solving skills: Finding solutions to various problems in a blue-collar setting.

Helping your workers tick these off can show that you care about their careers. They are capable of dealing with on-ground disruptions better than before. Further, clients are now willing to collaborate with a more proactive team.

BetterPlace, a digital platform for managing the complete lifecycle of your blue-collar workforce, has powerful learning modules to train and evaluate the progress of your frontline workers. Such initiatives have proved to significantly enhance safety, productivity and efficiency of blue-collar workers, while greatly increasing loyalty and retention. Contact us to know more.