A Bigger Strategy
[Upskilling] comes along at a time when teaching your employees new skills is no longer just a nice thing for a company to offer but a must-do (Robert Half, 2018).
Background
Some time has passed and a lot has happened since I first imagined an ePortfolio initiative and began building my innovation plan in the summer of 2018. As I've mentioned in various posts in the past, the plan I landed on was not the initial idea that I wanted to pursue. However, I'm glad that I was coached through the process and ultimately I came to the realization that while my original idea was valuable it was not particularly innovative.
In the backdrop of digital transformation, providing the right skilling opportunities to your workforce at the right time holds the key to the success of an organization (Gautam, 2018).
All slides from "Upskilling It" presentation (Yamashita, 2019)
|
In early 2019, I was able to begin implementation of my innovation plan, but I quickly slowed down and pulled back a bit—while early goals were achievable, I realized we had a problem standing in the way of long-term progress: we needed to "upskill." The implications of this were significant and would require a rethinking of everything we were working on in terms of leadership and professional learning. What I realized was that my implementation plan needed to be put on the back burner and the focus needed to shift to how we would address the needs of our staff before we could address the needs of our students.
|
Reassessment
Meanwhile, after reviewing case studies from both local and global perspectives such as the so-called "iPad Debacle" in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the success of the Chromebook rollout in the Milpitas Unified School District, and the innovative eSkwela project in the Philippines, I realized that I had not seen the broader picture. I took this early research and its findings and created a short video presentation on lessons learned. I then took an even deeper into the available literature to find more examples of implementation strategies and their outcomes. There's a lot of information out there and while it doesn't all relate directly to my innovation plan, the concepts are transferrable. I was able to glean a great deal of insight about what might make one project successful while another encounters significant challenges. This deep dive into additional research and the information collected was then synthesized in an updated literature review.
|
|
Looking Ahead
Since shifting focus from students to staff—in order to ultimately better serve our students in the long-term—my timeline has changed and new processes will need to be in place before we are able to circle back to the original implementation plan. The first thing we will be focusing on in the near term is providing relevant and sustained professional learning opportunities for our teachers. Without improved digital skills we cannot expect our staff to engage our learners in the digital arena. The research shows that with proper planning, strong support during implementation, and careful attention to the results in order to address challenges and improve processes, we have a much better chance of a successful rollout of the ePortfolio initiative. But it all starts with our team members. And there are benefits beyond helping our students, as a recent article on upskilling tells us.
Creating upskilling opportunities at your company isn’t just smart, it’s critical to the health and growth of your organization. Forward-thinking companies that consider what they want their staff to learn and what training and development methods are best for their goals reap the benefits with employees who are better at their jobs, more motivated and more likely to remain with the company (Robert Half, 2018).
As I've said many times now, it's time to believe the data and trust the process.
References
Gautam, A. (2018, July 06). Upskilling Employees In The World Of Digital Transformation: How To Retain And Engage Your Workforce. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/upskilling-employees-digital-transformation-retain-engage-workforce
Robert Half. (2018, August 09). The Importance of Upskilling Your Employees. Retrieved from https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/management-tips/the-importance-of-upskilling-your-employees
Robert Half. (2018, August 09). The Importance of Upskilling Your Employees. Retrieved from https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/management-tips/the-importance-of-upskilling-your-employees
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.