Reskilling and upskilling are essential for revitalizing the tech workforce. According to a report from the World Economic Forum, approximately half of the global workforce needs to undergo training to adapt to evolving roles influenced by automation and emerging technologies. The report also warns that if the workforce doesn’t acquire new skills by 2025, it could potentially take many years for professionals to prepare for the future of work.
Each day your teams don’t innovate or learn new skills, your business lags behind. Check out the top skills predicted for software developers in 2024.
One of the best things you can do is motivate your developers to learn new skills, like the ones above. Consider that the demand for skilled IT professionals continues to soar, and equipping your team with what they need to thrive will be crucial. With new skills, they can help keep your company competitive as the tech landscape embraces new technologies.
But, how do you pull off such a feat? Here are some ways you can try to help motivate those developers to learn new skills.
Pay for Training
You should consider budgeting and funding strategies for continuous training. You could send your team to workshops, have them enroll in classes, pay for online training, or bring in an expert who can do daily (or weekly) in-house sessions.
One of the problems you might face is that some of your team members don’t want to work when they’re off the clock. Remember, developers already put in long days, so if you expect them to take classes to learn new skills to help your company grow, don’t be surprised if they talk about doing so on their own time (and their own dime).
Pay for those developers to learn new tricks, and allow it to happen during business hours. Even if it’s a “lunch and learn” situation, those developers will be more willing to follow through if they don’t have to foot the bill or study outside of work.
Recognize Going Above and Beyond
Sometimes we get so busy that we forget to recognize those who make things happen. Yes, your development team might get paid a healthy salary to do what they do, but keep in mind that recognizing hard work will go a long way to motivating developers.
BairesDev knows that proper and timely recognition can go a long way in encouraging talent and promoting career growth. Our Rewards and Recognition program celebrates the professionals who embody our company values, while our Circles community invites top performers to partake in an open and rich conversation about the tech ecosystem.
Learn more about joining the top 1% LATAM tech talent.
You want to go the extra mile in recognizing developers who’ve learned new skills to help elevate your products and services. When the developers who aren’t learning new skills see how often the ones that do get recognized, they might change their tune and make the extra effort.
Not sure where to start? Here are some tips for employee recognition that will help you outline a comprehensive strategy.
Deploy New Technology to Tempt Developers
This might seem a bit backward, but if you start using new technology, your developers might well naturally be inclined to learn about it.
Say, for instance, your company has yet to start working with containers. You might already have a few developers on your team who are fluent in YAML and understand how containers work. Instead of waiting for everyone to get involved, start using containers on a small scale.
In the face of perceived competition, the developers who aren’t advancing their skills will jump at the chance, knowing that they would otherwise be left behind.
Offer Flexible Work Hours and/or Remote Work
Sometimes, all it takes is to demonstrate to your developers that you prioritize their well-being. If you insist on a strict Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five office schedule, your employees may become burnt out or overwhelmed by the inflexibility of this schedule.
Free your developers from such constraints, and you’ll find they’ll probably be more willing to take on new skills. And, to add fuel to this fire, allow those developers to choose between working in the office, working from home, or a hybrid of the two.
This kind of freedom shows your developers that you trust them to get their work done, even if they aren’t under the careful watch of management. That’s a powerful motivating force. We have championed remote work for over a decade and thoroughly understand that this model can be successful with key considerations.
You’ll want to make sure you have the infrastructure in place to allow it. Your work-from-home developers might need a bit of extra hardware to take home with them to ensure they have everything they need to not only get the job done but get it done with a level of security and efficiency that meets the requirements of your business and the sector you serve.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
You probably have junior and senior developers. Those categories are traditionally separated by time invested and money spent.
That limited model doesn’t really lean much into personalization for your teams. One thing you can do that will go a very long way to help motivate those employees is to keep a consistent dialog open between developers and management so your developers can express their goals to management. You might find some software engineers are perfectly happy doing what they’re doing, whereas others might feel the need to spread their wings and take on different duties.
It’s not easy to have career path conversations, but as an HBR article suggests, professionals need to proactively initiate a career-planning conversation with managers to paint a full picture of their ambitions and goals. You might discover that underskilled professionals would like to venture into DevOps, DevSecOps, or management. You might even learn some of those developers want to acquire new skills but don’t have the time or haven’t been encouraged to do so. Keeping the lines of communication open can make a huge difference in motivating your developers.
Make It Mandatory
When all else fails, make it mandatory. If you approach such a change without making it come off heavy-handed, you will find your software engineers will fall in line with the policy and do what’s required of them.
It is important, however, that you adjust this according to the culture you’ve created within your business. Do you make it mandatory for only junior developers, or is the mandatory skill learning across the board? Are you also offering to pay for the training and allowing it to happen during work hours, or are the developers on their own?
If you don’t sweeten the deal a bit (by footing the bill and allowing it to happen during company time), you might find making learning new skills mandatory could lead to a higher attrition rate.
Do this carefully, and it could pay off. Handle it poorly, and you’ll find yourself with a mass exodus on your hands.
It’s All on You
If you are a member of the C-suite of your company, it’s on you to make this happen in such a way that you don’t scare off your teams. Just remember, the more skills your developers have, the more your company will benefit. So approach such a change wisely, and its dividends will be fantastic.
