Employees will need to learn to be flexible to adapt to an ever-changing and uncertain world of work. Our way of life and working has changed because of COVID-19, and these changes are likely to last. How do we take advantage of technology to train the workforce of tomorrow? How do we build and share different ways of working? Adecco’s International Future Leaders (IFL) development programme brings together young professionals from all over the world across the Adecco Group to become future leaders with a strong commercial sense, skills and passion to deliver solutions to real-time business challenges.
Retraining and upskilling employees are key to maintaining an organisation’s success, as well as to an employee’s career advancement. Top talent prefers to join organisations that support their development and, in times of talent scarcity, and labour shortages, companies want to pay particular attention to their employees’ and candidates’ priorities. According to a Gallup survey, millennials are more likely to stay with companies that prioritise employee training and growth.
Employees want to learn new skills
By upskilling, we mean teaching people adjacent skills. They can develop new skills and increase their competence in areas that pertain to their role or department. On the other hand, retraining or reskilling is about acquiring new skills that will allow an employee to perform a new job.
PwC commissioned a survey that polled workers in 19 countries to find out that 77% of them are 'ready to learn new skills or completely retrain’. Therefore, companies should leverage technology and capitalise on employees’ willingness to upskill to gain a competitive edge.
In this regard, the IFL programme aims to develop leaders who can solve real-time business challenges through training and innovation. It is intended to increase the Adecco Group's ability to retain and develop high potential, early career talent, as well as create a strategic pool of high-quality internal candidates to feed the leadership pipeline.
“IFL, this innovative 18-month development program, incorporated Agile Project Management, Product Ownership, Finance, Design Thinking and Organisational Change Management to name a few,” says Dylan George, an account and project manager from Sydney Australia who applied to join the IFL programme back in 2020.
“I looked into the program on the intranet and I was amazed by the opportunity it presented and everything I could gain from joining, but the application process was vigorous and intense having multiple rounds of interviews, psychometric testing and questionnaires,” George told the Adecco Group. “I managed to pass all of this and was selected as the only Australian candidate, among 27 other internal colleagues.”