Emergenetics Associates: You Can Help Close Employee Skills Gaps
Across industries, organizations are realizing that they need to address gaps in the talents their workers have today and the ones they will need to succeed tomorrow. Doing so will help companies keep pace with competition, achieve long-term goals and benefit their bottom line. PWC even estimates that 5.3 million jobs would be created and $6.5 trillion USD added to the global GDP if skills gaps are closed by 2030.
To reshape their organizations, companies are turning to their Learning & Development leaders and partners to launch retraining initiatives. For Emergenetics® Associates, you have an advantage in developing valuable programs to prepare employees for the future of work by using Emergenetics to:
- Inform the strategy
- Set the foundation for skill building
- Enhance employees’ soft skills
3 Ways Emergenetics Can Inform Your Reskilling and Upskilling Strategy
When you use the Emergenetics framework and employ cognitive diversity to optimize your approach, you can quickly and easily:
- Build your strategy using WEteams
- Identify gaps to close with WEboarding
- Formulate your pitch through a WEapproach
Build Your Strategy Using WEteams
In addition to assembling people from various departments, levels and talents, consider cognitive diversity when creating a cross-functional team to support this initiative. Associates can use spectrum reports to understand the makeup of the proposed group. With these insights, you may add individuals to balance out any underrepresented Attributes. With cognitively diverse team members, you can feel more confident that the group will address multiple perspectives and arrive at better decisions when crafting an upskilling strategy.
Identify Gaps to Close with WEboarding
As you determine potential areas of focus for skill building initiatives, diversity of thought can help you understand business challenges from a range of viewpoints. Create WEboards by writing the name of each Thinking Attribute and the first-third and third-third of each Behavioral Attribute on virtual or physical whiteboards. As your team ideates about potential problems to solve, encourage them to think about skills gaps through the lens of each Attribute, so you can have a holistic view of business needs.
Formulate Your Pitch through a WEapproach
When you are ready to seek buy-in on your proposed initiatives, I invite you to use the Emergenetics template to recognize how each Attribute would prefer to receive information. The template also helps you anticipate questions from each preference. To develop your pitch, you may wish to lean on the Attributes in Action guide titled “Giving a Compelling Presentation” in your Emergenetics+ library. Our latest eBook also provides tailored recommendations to gain buy-in for reskilling and upskilling programs.
A Methodology to Set the Foundation for Skill Building
No matter what capabilities you choose to prioritize, there is one building block that can enhance the success of your outcomes: self-awareness. When employees understand their strengths, potential blind spots and take stock of their talents and opportunities for improvement, they will be better equipped to engage in skill building.
There are many ways to boost self-awareness, such as reflection, mindfulness programs or assessment tools like the Emergenetics Profile. To help staff increase self-understanding, uncover their gifts and recognize areas for growth, I encourage you to provide as many employees as possible with the opportunity to take the Profile and participate in an introductory Emergenetics workshop.
5 Emergenetics Resources That Can Enhance Employee Soft Skills
Self-awareness is not the only interpersonal aptitude that individuals will need to succeed in the future. As AI becomes more commonplace, employees will increasingly need to develop talents that cannot be easily replicated by technology. For that reason, many Learning & Development professionals are prioritizing soft skills.
As an Associate, you can boost employees’ interpersonal capacities using Emergenetics workshops and Emergenetics+ resources, including:
#1 Meeting of the Minds
Utilize our signature program to explore the innate strengths of each Emergenetics Attribute. In addition to enhancing self-awareness, the workshop helps employees:
- Enhance emotional intelligence by understanding how others prefer to think and behave
- Expand leadership skills by gaining insights into how to motivate and engage colleagues through the Attributes
- Improve communication and collaboration with strategies that speak to the interests of each preference
#2 Team Dynamics for Small Groups
This workshop is designed for departments, project teams or cross-functional groups of up to nine people who want to better understand their colleagues. In the program, they uncover tactics to improve the way they interact with one another so they can build skill in collaboration and communication. You can also use the workshop to help teams optimize productivity and problem solving by learning how best to work with their colleagues.
#3 Attributes in Action Guides
The Attributes in Action guides share tips to address common workplace challenges by flexing into different Attributes. Using the guides in coaching sessions, you can empower staff to strengthen their leadership by learning to adapt to the needs of their team. Individuals also benefit from these materials by expanding soft skills like communication as they discover how to effectively resolve conflict, give feedback and more.
#4 Post-Workshop Activities
In Emergenetics+, Associates have access to a few activities to support ongoing skill building. The 3-2-1 activity helps employees increase self-awareness and identify tactics to productively collaborate with colleagues. Through the Platinum Rule and i2i exercises, you can coach employees to consider other perspectives, so they expand their emotional intelligence and practice optimizing communication and teamwork.
#5 WEteams and WEboarding
By bringing the concepts of WEteams and WEboarding to a larger audience, employees get practice in understanding and incorporating alternative viewpoints. When staff members embrace cognitive diversity and proactively approach opportunities from different lenses, they can boost their emotional intelligence, innovation and problem-solving talents.
Using the resources at your disposal, Emergenetics Associates play an important role in making reskilling and upskilling programs a success. If you have not yet initiated your strategy, I encourage you to act now.
77% of employees report that they are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, which presents a powerful opportunity to companies who demonstrate that they are willing to invest in their people. By developing a strategy to close skills gaps, you can help your organization and staff embrace the future of work with confidence.
Learn to create an effective reskilling and upskilling plan with our eBook or fill out the form below to speak with our team about how Emergenetics can support your initiatives today.
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