Upskilling is challenging but necessary.
If you are in job then you have definitely heard of this term and from time to time you have to do the trainings in that regards. Even though. you are not going to get
the upskilled carrier profile and your carrier profile still remain the same with little hope to change. The main purpose of the upskilling from the organization perspective is to have future ready workforce which they are able to deploy as the technology modernized.With technology modernization,Organization are also forced to impose new technologies to their employees because if current technology become obsolete, they need workforce in new technology. Now this can be acheived in 2 ways, either their old workforce fit on these job roles or they have to hire new employees that are already trained on these new technology but this mean old employees will be let go or fired.
Above are the reasons from the organization perspective, that why they want to upskill their workforce but in the end the individual need to be upskilled and it is for the benefit of the individual to get upskilled. So something that is so beneficial for an individual, why individual become so disinterested in this whole process?
Inertia on upskilling.
Iguess below are few reasons that explain the inertia of upskilling that why an individual is not interested or not able to upskill.
a.) Too engrossed in the current role/ Time factors.
Sometime some individual are so engrossed in their current roles that they are spending more time in their role. With theu spending almost all of thier time in performing the job responsiblities of current role, it leave them with little or no time to upskill themselves.
b.) Unable to relate with the upskilling plan.
This is also very common and happened with me also when I got upkilling courses to upskill myselg with new frontend development techniques. With me, on the role of database administration, that upskilling plan is no use for me. Instead I need the upskilling plan regading the future of database administration in cloud, infrastucture modernization and the role in which database administrator can be transitioned into.
c.) Forced upskilling plan instead of curated/discussed upskilling plan.
In order to met the upskilling goal, sometime organization force the upskilling plan. With no interactive learning plan and no infrastructure to do hands on, this just become cram the course and clear the papers. Frnakly speakly, these upskilling plan suits best in displaying number in the papers but actual end result acheived from these upskilling is almost close to nil.
d.) Age factor.
I actually once having discussion with one of my old colleague, and he told me that he do not want to upskill as he is going to retire in next 5 years. Also he do not see that demand of old one is going to zero in next 5 years. So for hime, he is neither going to get chance on new technology, nor he his interested in this transition.
e.) Other plans.
Many of the employees , specially young generation have plans like higher studies or giving exams to other competive exams while doing job. With their priorties set , Organization upskilling plan is extra overhead to them.
Why one should upskill and plan for it's upskill.
When you updkill, you will be upskilling for your future so I will suggest that we should not ignore our upskilling goals instead we should work on the direction that make our upskilling smooth, If we are too engrossed in our current role, then we need to find a way to delegate our responsiblities so that we cah have time to learn new things. We should also discuss our upskilling plan with our management so that it can be curated or tailored as per our existing role and responsiblities. I guess you should not be ignoring your upskilling plan unless you yourself has some future plan that you deemed more better and rewarding.
My 2 cents.
Upskilling is always required and do not think that it is new think that just appeared due to the age of AI. Our previous generation has to upskill
themselves to the age of computer and other related goals come with it, Many technologies and languages got obsolete in the the IT, they also had to upskill themselves for it.
I can say current pace has become fast but it is not a new need. Afterwords upskilling is should be for you benefit only and you should take interest on it or chosse the field
that suit your interest to get upskilled. I feel if individual take interest and organization able to create tailore plans for the individuals then this will be fun exercise and will not be treated as burden on both side.