Up-Skilling

Up-skilling roughly translates to “skill upgrading” or “further qualification”. It refers to people learning new skills within their job because the requirements have changed. The occupation itself stays the same, only the tools and tasks are new. An accountant who learns to work with new software is engaging in up-skilling. This should be distinguished from so-called re-skilling: there, someone switches completely to a different occupation, for example moving from the warehouse into software development. Both terms currently appear frequently in the news because companies want to prepare their workforce for artificial intelligence.

What the AI boom means for jobs

Many activities don’t disappear completely, they change. A programmer today writes every line themselves less often. Instead, they check and correct suggestions generated by an AI system. That is different work than five years ago, even if the job title has stayed the same.

For companies, up-skilling is often cheaper than hiring new staff. Experienced employees know the customers, the processes and the internal rules. This knowledge cannot be quickly bought in. It is usually cheaper to teach someone a new tool than to train a new person from scratch.

Politics is also interested in the topic. When entire industries change the way they work, unemployment and a shortage of skilled workers can threaten to occur at the same time. Funding programs for further training are meant to cushion this. Whether that succeeds is disputed, because further training often fails to reach exactly the people who would need it most urgently.

From courses to learning on the job

Traditionally, up-skilling happens through courses. These can be online videos, multi-day training sessions, or certificates from providers such as Google or Microsoft. Such certificates confirm that someone has mastered a particular tool. They are shorter and cheaper than a degree, but also less broad in scope.

In practice, a lot of learning happens on the side during everyday work. Companies provide teams with tools and let them practice with them on real tasks. Some set up internal “academies” where experienced colleagues mentor others. The advantage: what is learned fits precisely the company’s problems.

A common misconception is that up-skilling for AI is about programming. For most occupations, that isn’t true. What’s actually in demand are skills such as: formulating good instructions for an AI system, checking results for errors, and assessing which data must not be entered. That is less about technology than about judgment.

Up-skilling in corporate announcements and in your own résumé

In press releases, you’ll almost always encounter the term in the form of numbers. A corporation announces that it will invest one billion euros in the further training of 100,000 employees. Such announcements often come in the same breath as job cuts. That is no coincidence: companies want to show that they are taking responsibility while they restructure.

For investors, up-skilling is also a business field. Providers of online learning platforms earn money from companies purchasing courses. Their share prices therefore react to how strongly the need for further training is currently assessed.

And finally, the term concerns you personally. Anyone at school today will have to learn new tools multiple times over the course of their working life. This is not a cause for alarm, but has rather become the normal case. More important than mastering a particular piece of software is the ability to quickly familiarize yourself with new ones.