Reskilling and Upskilling employees

How do we close skill gaps without constantly hiring? How do we build internal capabilities fast enough to keep up with change?

These aren’t abstract challenges — they’re the daily reality for HR leaders.
As AI, automation, sustainability goals, and shifting business models reshape work at speed, the pressure to adapt is growing.

Critical roles remain unfilled
Training feels disconnected from strategy
Top performers leave due to lack of growth
And despite investments, skill gaps keep widening

Hiring alone can’t solve this. It’s slow, costly, and often unnecessary — because the skills you need may already be inside your organisation.

The opportunity?
By 2025, 85 million jobs will be transformed — but 97 million new ones will emerge, demanding new skills and agility.
And 94% of employees say they’d stay longer at companies that invest in their development.

Organisations don’t just need more learning. They need a system to build internal capability — fast, at scale, and with real business impact.

That’s where ImpactWork comes in.

50%

of all employees need to be reskilled the coming 5 years

The Challenge:

In today’s economy, your people’s ability to learn, unlearn and grow defines your organisation’s ability to compete.

Upskilling means helping people deepen or expand their current skillsets—for example, a marketer learning AI-powered analytics, or a team lead developing stronger leadership and collaboration skills.
Reskilling is about learning entirely new capabilities—equipping employees to move into different roles as technology reshapes job functions. Think of a technician learning to operate robotics, or a customer service rep training in UX design.

While the need for reskilling and upskilling is urgent, most companies struggle to implement them effectively. Common barriers include:

No visibility into existing skills or future gaps
Training disconnected from business needs
Employee resistance due to fear or unclear ROI
Lack of time and space for learning in daily workflows
Difficulty tracking progress and measuring impact

Learning becomes an afterthought. Development gets deprioritised. And strategic goals suffer.

Our approach.

We don’t see reskilling and upskilling as isolated learning efforts.

We treat them as strategic building blocks — essential capabilities that influence how your organisation performs, evolves, and stays competitive.

That’s why our approach goes beyond traditional L&D.

We combine business goals with skills intelligence, workforce data, and cultural insight to design development strategies that stick.

By embedding growth into the everyday employee experience, we turn development from a one-time training into a long-term, future-proof advantage.

How we do it:

Map your skills landscape

We begin with a clear-eyed view of where you are now. Through strategic skill mapping, we identify the capabilities your workforce has, the ones it’s missing, and where hidden potential is going untapped. This gives you the foundation to make informed decisions—not based on guesswork, but on real, actionable insights.

Align learning to business value

Learning is only powerful when it’s purposeful. We connect reskilling and upskilling to the priorities that drive your organisation—whether it’s digital innovation, operational excellence or future workforce planning. Every learning path is designed to move the needle on what matters most to your business.

Measure mobility, learn, and adapt

We help you define the right tools and KPIs to track your skills across the business!

''The organisations that lead tomorrow are reskilling today. Because it’s not the strongest that survive—it’s the most adaptable.''
— ImpactWork.

The impact.

Reskilling and upskilling are not just learning initiatives—they’re business transformation levers. When skills development is fully integrated into your strategy, it directly contributes to agility, retention, and growth.

Organisations that embrace continuous skill building position themselves to move faster, adapt smarter, and grow from within—while attracting the kind of talent that values purpose and progression.

The strategic impact of reskilling and upskilling includes:

1. Faster internal mobility
Skills become the foundation for opportunity—making it easier to match people to new roles, projects, or career paths without external hiring.

2. Increased retention and engagement
Employees are far more likely to stay when they see clear development opportunities. Investing in their growth drives loyalty and reduces turnover.

3. Higher team performance and adaptability
Learning is connected directly to role evolution and business priorities, enabling employees to perform with greater confidence and impact.

4. Reduced hiring costs and external dependency
Filling critical roles from within becomes easier when capabilities are visible and growing. Your workforce becomes your talent pipeline.

5. Stronger employer brand
Organisations that invest in people signal long-term thinking and care. That attracts ambitious, purpose-driven talent—and keeps them.

6. A culture of growth and future-readiness
Learning becomes part of daily work, not an afterthought. Employees are empowered to move forward—not just in their role, but in their mindset.

Want to get started with skills?

Discover how our services can help you with the transition to becoming a skills-based organisation—one that thrives on adaptability, inclusion, and performance.

Shifting to a skills-based model is more than a structural change—it’s a cultural transformation. It requires new ways of thinking about talent, capability, and potential. It means moving beyond static job titles and hierarchies, toward a dynamic system where work is designed around skills, not roles. Where people aren’t boxed in, but built up.

Our services

Skills-powered organisation

Recruitment excellence

40%

more skills development in organisations that became a skills-based organisation (source: Udemy)

Ready for the first step? Let's talk!

Rogier van Hamburg

Co-founder ImpactWork

There's many challenges in the world of work, but together we can tackle them. We're here to help you improve your HR strategically and create thriving workplaces. Check our services pages for more information on how we can help, and feel free to reach out!

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Not just words, Action.

Future-proof HR strategy

The Municipality of The Hague was grappling with a key question: "How can we modernize our HR technology to effectively support our long-term goals and meet the evolving needs of our employees?"

HeadFirst Group places more than 20,000 professionals with over 500 clients in Europe every day, achieving an annual turnover of more than 2 billion euros.

DJI aims to establish a data-driven recruitment and selection process to address critical challenges. This initiative seeks to create a structured and periodic measurement system that combines results, process data, and experience metrics.

The four biggest HR challenges explained briefly.

25%

Of our profit is going to projects that support sustainable work causes. Example: Helping novices to find work.

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