There is no escape from Reskilling

At BNP Paribas, we do it differently and invest in reskilling people who are associated with the company and have the potential to develop in the world of new technologies.

About 60% of people related to IT require developer skills, the rest can find themselves in this environment without this competence. Even 25 years ago, according to many people, an IT specialist only coded and was the main, often the only, representative of the IT department in the company. But these have grown and today they are a multicolored and diverse mosaic of people, functions and competences needed to achieve increasingly ambitious goals. In the IT world, so many different roles have been created that not only strict minds will find themselves in them. Scrum Master, data analyst, Agile Coach are just a few examples of professions that do not require advanced knowledge of programming.

Companies like ours help their employees pave the way to the world of new technologies, because we constantly need specialists who will strengthen our IT facilities.

In my opinion, reskilling is the only way to secure access to talent. It is therefore a strategic response to problems with access to IT specialists, which many companies find difficult to overcome using traditional methods, i.e. recruitment or employer branding. What's more, in my opinion, reskilling also pays off for the company. When we calculate the expenses on recruitment, bonuses for transferring a candidate from another company to ours, providing him with a certain remuneration, it may turn out that the decision to re-industry the current employees will be neutral, if not more cost-effective. Especially if we take into account the minimized risk of a candidate's cultural mismatch or unsuccessful implementation. By investing in the development of employees who have already proven themselves in other roles, but their professions are changing due to the progressing digitization, the company uses their potential, gives them opportunities for new opportunities, and thus increases their loyalty. In the era of the employee market, these benefits seem invaluable. Particularly grateful recipients of reskilling projects are people associated with the company for several or more years, whose professional profile is exhausting. At BNP Paribas, as part of the I Can Do IT pilot project, we enabled people over 50 to acquire qualifications as programming testers and completely change their career path. In this way, we wanted to disenchant the IT industries and encourage BNP Paribas employees to change industries from any area in our bank to work as an IT Tester in the area of ​​New Technologies, in accordance with the training path prepared by our internal experts-practitioners. Almost 140 people applied for the project, even though the pilot edition was addressed to 25 participants. The first graduates are already doing a new job, and the rest are waiting for the next recruitment, because they have priority in them.

The conclusion suggests itself. Instead of dismissing employees because their competences have become obsolete, it is better to look for new jobs and give them new competences that will allow them to meet expectations. Even if not all employees appreciate investments in their development and leave thanks to becoming more attractive on the labor market, they will leave with a better opinion of the employer. And this news will spread around the world. The time has come for reliable employers who offer development opportunities, expand their benefit policy and invest in the development of their people.

Magdalena Nowicka, Vice-President of the Management Board of BNP Paribas Bank Polska

source: IBM, (2014), The Value of Training, (https://www.ibm.com/training/pdfs/IBMTraining-TheValueofTraining.pdf).

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The article is part of a report on employee reskilling titled "The Great Skills Reset," authored by Future Collars and ICAN Institute.
The publication provides a comprehensive overview of issues related to filling the competency gap within companies, as well as a summary of discussions surrounding key challenges in Poland regarding the lack of IT specialists in the Polish job market.
The report is aimed not only at management and HR departments but also at anyone interested in professional and personal development, as well as ensuring a stable position in the future job market.

You can download the full report in both Polish and English versions here:
https://reskilling.pl/raporty/

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FUTURE COLLARS is a programming and digital competence school. The innovative teaching method of Future Collars is directed towards both individuals who want to change their career path and enter the world of IT, as well as companies seeking effective and efficient development programs for reskilling and upskilling their employees.

The Future Collars offering is continually expanded and adjusted to meet the current needs of the job market and the IT industry. Currently, it consists of 14 COURSES covering various programming languages, UX design, project management, and Business Intelligence.