11 Tips for upskilling your software engineering team

Software engineering is a very competitive and technical job and here getting an employee turnover is very expensive. Making a software engineer expert in their work and investing in that particular employee, is much more extravagant than just their salaries. So, when you are upskilling your employees, you are making them valuable for your organization. Software engineers with great morale and high productivity and technical knowledge are hard to come by. So, software companies should invest in upskilling their software engineer teams because it will pay off in the long run as the company can save money on hiring and investing time in new associates.

Upskilling Strategies

You should identify the skills that you need to boost up your company and understand which employees in your team have quality and techniques and will to learn new skills. By implementing the right upskilling strategies, you can push your company’s curve forward.

Here are some strategies to upskill your team.

Personal Development Plans

Personal Development Plans paves you the way to develop the skills of the employees at every level of learning. Motivate your teams to improve their skills they want to gain and empower them to come up with their own strategies. This will give them the ownership of their own professional development and the right skills across their team.

Allocate Time During the Workday

Every employee of your workplace will have their daily work plans. Allocate time during the workday for your team to upskill. Arrange some self-developing schedule for them and allocate each team with extra time or let them leave early to attend in-office or virtual classes.

Track Team Member Progress

First of all, you need to set some self-development skill routine for your teams and then you need to develop a process to track their progress. All you need to make sure that your teams are holding on to the skills they are needed to develop. You can use any project management software to plan a long-term upskill project and track the teams progress. At the successful completion of their self-development tasks, you can award them with a simple party or a bonus. This will sustain the bonding between you and your team.

Courses and Seminars

For getting your software team upskilled organizing formal courses, trainings and attending seminars will bring out new skills to your software teams. Many professional and technical skills can be grasped with training courses. And attending different seminars related to modern software systems and technologies will bring a great expertise to your team. The actual benefit of this approach is that when your team members will attain that new knowledges, they can enrich their software with those advancements and give your company a new platform.

On Job Training

For on job training, you do not need to enroll your team in any training courses or attend any seminars or hire any trainer. In your own organization, you may have some skilled employees having deep knowledge on their own projects. You can use any work scheduling tool to schedule training sessions, where your existing professional team members can teach new and developed skills in a more formal way. You can assist a senior team leader who will guide the other teams to learn new skills and ensure proper wisdom.

Virtual Training

To provide your team a proper tuition virtual training can play a vital role along with on job training. This is helpful for your software engineers as they work on the same project from a different sector and this will help them to bring together under one roof. You can provide them with different online communication technology which will help them to be in contact and schedule a time for them. Any trainer or senior software mentor can upload related documents, videos, and online testing to make sure your team is getting the right monitoring, guide, and knowledge needed to develop their skills.

Microlearning

Microlearning is another effective way of getting your software engineering team upskilled. Basically, it denoted short web-based training modules that cover any software related topic in 5-10 minutes. This approach can be implemented at a small coffee break or at the beginning or end of the day. This is a great proposition to enhance the skills of your teams during short workday breaks.

Lunch and Learns

Since in a software company, employees remain busy most of the time. So, taking out extra time for developing skills become very hard for them. So, you can host “Lunch and Learn” method to reskill your learners. Schedule a lunchtime training session in a more relaxed atmosphere to cover certain topics that can advance their skills. You can share upskilling videos, presentation with your team while they eat at the lunch hour.

Mentors / Subject Matter Experts

You may have some knowledgeable and skilled employees in your company. You can utilize your best employees in a mentorship program and they will lead the team with different training programs. Your expert employees can answer software related questions and explain difficult processes from a practical perspective. This process is cost-effective since you do not need any extra hand to help your team to be upskilled.

Share Multimedia Content

Different journals, podcasts, and TED Talks are enriched with information. It is easier for your team to learn more about their related field. These resources are free so you can create a list of software related multimedia content. Encourage your team to read and share books, journals, articles and listen to podcasts and TED Talks. Cheer them up to discuss the latest software tools and techniques among themselves.

Weekly Spotlights

Weekly spotlight can be a great approach for getting your software engineering team upskilled and to build up the team bonding and develop self-confidence of each employee of your software team. Pick a different person from your team once in a week to share some knowledge and experience about work with other team members. This will help them to encourage skill sharing in the workplace. It is also a great way to discover new and interesting things about recent technologies or about each individual.

Upskilling is a planning for the long-term future of both your organization and your employees. Regular training, skill development sessions are the effective tools for any of your employees. This will turn your team into a valuable workforce and they will feel worthy. This approach of getting your software engineering team upskilled, will not only move your company forward but also reward you with a knowledgeable, skilled and motivated workforce.