Episode 30: What does upskilling mean?

Have you heard the expression skills gap before?

Let’s say a company is looking for employees who have a good understanding of and experience working with artificial intelligence. However, there aren’t enough candidates with these skills on the job market. That is a skills gap.

The phrase skills gap refers to the difference between the skills that employers want and the skills that people looking for a job have. Companies are suffering from a lack of employees with the right qualifications across the board. In fact, 83 percent of training professionals surveyed by the Association of Talent Development (ATD) say their companies have a skills gap.

Keeping up with the pace of technological advancement is a challenge for companies of all shapes and sizes. Of course, new technologies often lower the cost of doing business, or make the business more competitive. But the downside of how fast tech is advancing is that not a lot of people can keep up with it.

Yes, there is a shortage of people with technical skills on the job market. If we’re talking about a shortage of something, we’re talking about a situation in which there is not enough of that thing. As companies integrate digital technology, even employees who are not working in high tech companies, must become more technically savvy.

If you’re savvy, that means you have practical knowledge or ability in a certain field. We explained this term in episode 29 as well.

This is where upskilling comes in.

To upskill means to learn advanced skills, and it’s usually done in the workplace. We can use this verb to talk about teaching employees new skills, but also about employees learning new skills. You’ll hear me using it both ways throughout the episode.

In episode 30, we talk about why companies should invest in employee upskilling and a few ways in which upskilling benefits the employees as well. We’ll also teach you 10 Business English terms you can use to talk about upskilling and staying competitive.

Here are a few of the expressions we talk about in this lesson:

employee morale
to be savvy
to be ahead of the curve

Here’s the episode audio.

Smart Startup English · Episode 30 – What does upskilling mean? (Business English)

If you want to listen to more episode about English for Human Resources, here are a few links to get you started:

Episode 7 – Do startups need HR departments?

Episode 18 – Three strategies for effective candidate engagement

Episode 24 – Startup burnout

To get our episodes for free, you can also subscribe to the Smart Startup English podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud and Spotify.

If you want to keep practicing the words you’ve learned in this lesson, sign up below to get the episode transcript for free. We’ll also let you know when we release new episodes, and we’ll give you access to ten free Business English audio lessons and worksheets.