Considerate curation and the effectiveness of right-skilling

Kelly Jenkins, Sales Development Manager at Go1, Amanda Nolen, Co-Founder of Niles-Nolen, Sebastian Tindall, Director or L&D Operations with Vitality and Josh Novelle, Director of Digital Learning Solutions with Warner Music Group, gather to discuss the why behind curation and effectiveness of right-skilling at Festival of Work in London. 

Adaptability in a digital first age

Amanda begins the discussion by reflecting on the continued decline of skills and workers switching occupations, accelerated by the pandemic. Opening the floor to the panel, she asks how successful they might have been in facilitating this change. Josh considers how his team made meaningful content accessible to audiences regardless of location, whilst Sebastian reflects on the organisation's initial struggle with the transition to digital L&D resources, highlighting how adaptability is key for organisations’ long term success.

Finally, Kelly underlines the significance of soft skills and digital agility from a senior leadership perspective. Amanda explores this further, questioning how engaged people are with the idea of learning. Josh states that companies with authentic, intentional L&D programmes are more impactful.

Using the poll feature, Amanda asked the audience: In one word, how would you describe your upskilling strategy? The audience answered, ‘internal, sketchy, changing and tedious’. 

Upskilling and internal mobility

Next, the panel explores their relationship with talent from fully integrated to sileod structures. Sebastian states that his organisation is increasingly collaborative, taking a holistic approach. In agreement, Kelly explores the synergy between talent and L&D; highlighting the importance of open conversations and bringing teams together.

Understanding relationships with talent management is crucial to successful upskilling and an important driver in employee retention. Companies with a strategy for internal mobility find that employees stay twice as long. Josh continues the discussion, advising that upskilling and reskilling strategy starts with the talent life cycle.

When reviewing the growing difficulty for companies to stay competitive, Kelly advises her clients that access to resources as well as navigating the optics between L&D and talent is key. Amanda agrees, recommending tackling a tangible need and growing skills internally.

Alignment with organisational needs

Amanda points out that people can't always be moved to fit the company’s needs, and asks the panel to share their best practices for aligning content curation against the needs of the organisation. Sebastian advises to identify what skills are going to be fundamental to your company’s success in 5 years time and resultantly get ahead of the economic curve.

Amanda agrees, stating that some technical skills now have a lifetime of just 2.5 years. Josh shares his experience of learning through network connections and peer-to-peer learning. He says that soft skills have no shelf life, and those individuals willing and curious are the ones to help you forecast technical skills.

Where to focus with skills development

The panel concluded that forecasting future skills is speculative and a test and learn approach is most effective. When it comes to giving advice to Go1 customers around curation, Kelly stresses the importance of quality over quantity. With over 100,000 courses, Go1 is a content aggregator but also an ongoing content curation platform. Kelly shares that they can inform decisions based on real time data, identifying what’s working for customers in your industry and wider ecosystem.

Bringing the session to a close, the panel review how they can seize the opportunities brought to us by the pandemic and not regress. Sebastian reflects on employee migration and the increase in new vacancies. Josh adds the importance of organisation’s fostering an experimentation culture, to attract future employees. Kelly concludes that this comes back to digital agility and having the L&D resources to support such individuals’ aspirations. 

You can catch up on the full session below.

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