Best in Tech winners: How to get results from tech skill development
Get insights on creating successful upskilling programs for tech skills from Best in Tech winners Morgan Stanley, FactSet, and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG).
Jul 10, 2024 • 4 Minute Read
When it comes to tech skill development, who better to turn to for advice than the leaders and teams who’ve already driven results through successful upskilling programs?
Learn how Best in Tech winners Morgan Stanley, FactSet, and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) accelerate innovation, create custom learning paths, and engage employees with skill development.
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How to create engaging employee upskilling programs: Advice from top organizations
Morgan Stanley, FactSet, and the USCG’s unique challenges stemmed from the same cause: the rapid pace of technological change.
With the advent of generative AI and evolving tech stacks, Morgan Stanley and FactSet needed a way to keep up with the tech landscape, innovate faster, and better support their clients. The USCG needed a plan to modernize their legacy infrastructure, address technical debt, and enhance security.
To overcome these challenges and achieve their goals, they all settled on the same solution: upskilling. Here are some of the skill development strategies they’ve implemented to drive results.
Provide flexible learning time for tech skill development
Morgan Stanley recognized a correlation between time spent on learning and high performance. So they provide flexible learning options to help employees fit upskilling into their busy schedules.
They also create campaigns to incentivize learning. Between expert-led webinars, themed learning blocks on specific topics, and prizes, they encourage employees to engage and learn relevant skills. Their efforts led to a 46% year-over-year decrease in the number of days employees needed to upskill.
Quick tip: Offer bite-sized training courses and dedicated learning time to encourage employees to upskill at work.
Leverage data and analytics to find tech skills gaps
With any initiative, tracking success is critical. Upskilling is no exception. Morgan Stanley and FactSet use detailed metrics to see upskilling activity across tech stacks. This allows them to identify skills gaps and find solutions to address them.
By looking at which courses are most popular and how often their learners engage, they ensure skill development aligns with client needs and can develop strategies to boost engagement if needed.
They also offer skill assessments so employees can evaluate their skills and knowledge gaps on their own. At Morgan Stanley, learners used skill- and role-based self-assessments to drive a 56% skill increase.
Quick tip: Use your learning platform’s data to understand your teams’ interests and how they align with your business needs. Treat skill assessments as learning opportunities, not tests. Reward employees for finding gaps in their knowledge and make sure they aren’t penalized for what they don’t know.
Build personalized learning paths and job-specific training
When the USCG saw skills gaps in critical areas like cloud and security, they built tailored learning paths to stay on top of cybersecurity threats, modernize cloud architecture, and ensure their teams learned the right skills.
Security and cloud professionals earn skills and certifications for their specific roles, while others develop tech fluency and foundational knowledge. When everyone shares the same knowledge base, they’re able to operate new systems effectively and maintain operational efficiency.
Personalized learning also boosts employee engagement because teams know they’re learning relevant skills that will help them day to day. The result? The USCG saw a 40% improvement in personnel upskilling and rapid upskilling across critical teams thanks to tailored content and hands-on learning.
Quick tip: Create a skills inventory to identify the skills and knowledge each role requires, then create custom learning paths to plug gaps. Learn how to build a skills inventory and find skills gaps on your teams.
Offer hands-on learning experiences for tech skills
Tech professionals say hands-on learning is the best way to learn and apply new skills. After all, practical application improves skill acquisition and encourages learners to experiment—without creating additional security risk.
That’s why FactSet provides hands-on labs for engineers at all levels, from new hires to principal engineers. In fact, 90% of their tech skills learning happens on Pluralsight, with employees logging in for the hands-on labs and high-quality content.
Quick tip: Augment video content and support different learning styles by giving employees a variety of hands-on labs, sandboxes, and projects for tech skill development.
Upskill for emerging technologies as soon as possible
FactSet dove into upskilling for generative AI over a year ago. And that decision has paid off significantly. While other organizations scramble to make sense of this technology, FactSet has already seen a 20% increase in prompt efficiency, which comes out to an average savings of 1,580 hours over the last three months.
Quick tip: Ensure your teams have a strong grasp of foundational tech skills before diving into emerging technologies. Then identify the tech most relevant to your goals and create an upskilling plan for your use cases. Learn how to create an upskilling strategy for AI technology.
Build up your organization’s tech skills
To put these expert insights into practice, create an upskilling strategy and choose the right platform for learning tech skills.
Want even more insights from leading organizations? Explore the full stories:
