The Importance of Employee Skill Development and Where to Start

Key takeaways

Skill development helps your employees grow professionally by identifying goals, closing skill gaps, and building targeted abilities.

• Common types of skill development include upskilling, cross‑skilling, and reskilling, each supporting growth in different ways.

• Skill development can include both workplace and external programs, and you can support employees as they build abilities that advance your business and enrich their personal growth.

• You can start by helping your employees define a specific career goal and assessing their strengths before pinpointing the exact skills they need to strengthen.

Discover what skill development involves and how to help your team build their capabilities. Then, consider offering learning opportunities that build the skills your business needs through Coursera for Business, which provides valuable training materials in a wide range of areas, including Guided Projects and Professional Certificates. 

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What is skill development?

Skill development is the process of improving specific skills to perform tasks more efficiently and effectively. In the workplace, you’ll find three main types of skill development:

• Upskilling: Improving skills in a current role

• Cross-skilling: Learning new skills for a current role 

• Reskilling: Learning new skills to move on to a new role 

Skill development is often supported by workplace programs, but your employees can also take advantage of external learning opportunities. For example, they might be working toward a degree, preparing for a new internal role or promotion, or considering a career shift, and you can support that growth in meaningful ways. Encouraging your employees to develop their skills can boost their productivity and confidence at work while also equipping them with tools to enhance their personal lives.

9 steps to provide your employees with skill development opportunities

To help employees build new skills or encourage personal growth that can benefit both them and your company, consider taking these steps to get started. 

1. Establish goals.

Begin by setting clear long term goals for your business and helping your employee define thier career goals. Identify why strengthening a particular skill matters for your team or organization and what outcomes it will help achieve, whether that’s filling a talent gap, supporting succession planning, or improving overall performance. Establishing a clear end goal can provide direction, motivation, and a foundation for reverse‑engineering your path forward.

For example, if an employee wants to transition into a project coordinator position, that clear goal allows you to work with them to identify the skills and experiences they’ll need to build to get there. 

2. Identify skills gaps.

Take time to assess your employee’s strengths and consider what they need to develop in order to reach your collective goal.  For example, if they already possess most of the skills your business needs, but their social media abilities could benefit from some improvement, then that’s a key area to strengthen. Since social media is valuable across many industries, building expertise in that area and understanding how it intersects with AI can help you market your product or service more effectively. 

In addition to setting clear growth objectives and conducting skills gap assessments, gathering input from your colleagues and employees who work closely with you, and reviewing role expectations and industry trends can help you pinpoint areas for improvement and guide your development efforts toward your long‑term business goals.

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3. Target specific skill areas.

When discussing a role, you can divide the necessary skills into workplace skills (sometimes called soft skills or human skills) and technical skills (sometimes called hard skills).

Workplace skills

Workplace skills are used at work to interact with others and solve problems independently. Some may be naturally inherent to an employee, and some may require further honing and development. Some common workplace skills include:

• Communication

• Time management 

• Adaptability 

• Creativity

• Critical thinking

• Time management 

• Teamwork

These skills often manifest in real-world scenarios and interactions. Many of them are subjective, so they are typically assessed by observing your employee and talking with them about where they believe they need skills development.

Technical skills

On the other hand, technical skills, or hard skills, are those you can quantify. As an employer, you can often assess these by looking at concrete evidence of an employee’s work. For example, if an employee has strong budgeting skills, you might review how they kept a project within its financial targets or helped reduce operating costs.  If they use data analysis at work, you can assess their proficiency with machine learning, data visualization, and up-to-date AI skills. Moreover, if they’ve mastered Microsoft Office, they can demonstrate that proficiency through certifications or completed coursework. 

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4. Expand professional networks.

One way to start skill development is to see how others approach it. For instance, if you want an employee to build stronger social media skills, encourage them to expand their network to people who excel in the field.  You could contact a forward-thinking digital marketing company to see if they'd facilitate a meeting with one of their social media experts. Alternatively, you could ask your employees to browse social media and reach out to journalists or influencers with a strong understanding of the platform. 

Even colleagues, friends, or family members with proven social media expertise can offer valuable insights. These interactions not only help the employee develop technical skills but also strengthen important workplace abilities, such as communication, curiosity, and active listening.

5. Get a coach.

Consider connecting with a professional coach who specializes in developing the skills your company requires. This may require an upfront expense, but it may help your bottom line in the long run.

Read more: Why Do Managers Need Coaching Skills?

6. Read and research.

Given that the internet is such a huge part of modern life, you’ll find plenty of relevant material related to skill development to explore online. Reading and learning as much as possible about any skill you and your team want to improve can help you gain a better understanding of it. Consider educational videos and podcasts to immerse your employees in high-quality information that relates to the skill.

7. Provide courses and training opportunities.

Provide your employees with resources to sign up for a workshop or class on their chosen topic. For example, a platform like Coursera offers Guided Projects and online courses and degree programs to help your team build skills in areas such as marketing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, health care, project‑management software, and so much more, , including Small Business Marketing Using YouTube and Get started with Asana. 

8. Encourage certification.

Certifications are typically available for many of the more in-demand skills. Reputable certifying bodies, including Google, Microsoft, CompTIA, the Project Management Institute (PMI), and Amazon Web Services (AWS), help your employees stay current in their field and bring new skills to your company.

9. Support practice.

Encourage your team to practice their new or emerging skills on the job While employees  hone their abilities, encourage them to stay open to feedback, so they can keep progressing.

How to help employees develop critical thinking skills

As noted earlier, critical thinking is an essential workplace skill, and employers can play a key role in helping employees strengthen it. Critical thinking matters in the workplace because it helps teams shift from reacting to challenges to solving complex problems with more confidence. It empowers them to do more than just complete tasks; it fosters better decision-making and creativity, aligns with strategic objectives, and helps mitigate distractions. 

Analytical thinking, open-mindedness, problem-solving, reasoned judgment, reflective thinking, communication, research, and decision-making are all crucial skills for critical thinking. These abilities aid in the more comprehensive process of information conceptualization, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Some practical techniques that support critical thinking development include:

• Clearly defining a problem: Encourage your team members to examine presumptions and identify the problem.

• Gather relevant information: Support research that includes diverse data sources and perspectives.

• Analyze and evaluate data: Help employees determine what information is reliable and significant.

• Consider differing viewpoints: Promote open discussion that challenges assumptions and reduces bias.

• Reflect on outcomes: Ask employees to review what worked, what did not, and why.

These practices support more autonomous, deliberate decision-making at work, boost confidence, and enhance judgment.

Support your team’s skill development with Coursera

With Coursera for Business, your team will have access to learning opportunities from over 350 leading companies and universities to gain in-demand skills and valuable experience that they can bring to your business, all while earning industry-recognized credentials. With customizable learning opportunities, you can equip your workforce with the skills they need to succeed.

• Discover the most critical skills employees need to perform at a high level in today’s jobs with the Global Skills Report.

• See Coursera in action with our demo video.

• Training a smaller team? Explore Coursera for Teams, designed to meet the needs of teams with five to 125 employees.

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