How to Maximize your HR Team’s Potential
Making reskilling and upskilling a strategic priority is an effective way to maximize the potential of your HR team. Discover how this can future-proof your HR talent and make HR an engine for business transformation.
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Unlocking HR’s true potential
Today’s HR leaders need to lead through uncertainty, from tech disruption to evolving employee expectations. To keep pace, their teams must be equipped with the right skills. Instead of growing only in headcount or infrastructure, the most successful organizations are unlocking HR’s true capacity through strategic ongoing skills development.
That’s where upskilling and reskilling come in, meeting both everyday execution needs and bigger-picture strategic objectives, ensuring HR’s influence remains strong and adaptive.
How should HR approach upskilling and reskilling differently
| Upskilling | Reskilling |
| Goal: Improve performance, future-proof current roles |
Goal: Enable internal mobility, fill skill gaps in new areas |
| Focus: Deepening HR domain expertise, building adjacent capabilities |
Focus: Developing new capabilities outside of current job to help career or role changes |
| Approach: Microlearning, mentoring, on-the-job training, certifications |
Approach: Formal training programs, job rotations, role-specific learning paths |
| Best for: High-performing employees, evolving job requirements |
Best for: Redeploying talent, preparing for automation/displacements |
Assess first, then invest wisely
Before leaping into development initiatives, it’s critical to define key job requirements and conduct a skills-based talent audit. With a job analysis, using all available information and insights from those familiar with what it takes to succeed in that role, a set of skills that determine success can be built.
Objective assessment tools can then measure those skills and those for wider organizational objectives such as business transformation, or AI-readiness in your team to reveal the current skill landscape.
Understanding where gaps exist, and their impact on organizational success, enables HR to target what matters most and lay the foundation for effective growth and skills transformation. Reviewing existing skills data helps tailor interventions to align with future roles and support both onboarding and ongoing career development.
“To build a future-ready workforce, we need clear visibility into employees’ true capabilities and potential”
Neeta Saggar, Skills Expert, Coca-Cola HBC
Reskill and redeploy talent
Whether you’re looking to close skills gaps or elevate a team member to a different role, structured development plans should be utilized to enable upskilling and reskilling. Employees can be empowered with clear, personalized direction so they develop skills in areas that align with organizational goals.
With this internal-first mindset, talent can be redeployed to areas that need support before engaging external talent pools. This approach saves time and money while also retaining those who are already embedded in the company culture, work processes, and values. Looking ahead, the talent with the greatest developmental potential can be identified and nurtured to grow into critical roles that the organization needs in the future.
Empower employees to create a culture of development
Continuous learning ensures HR teams remain innovative, engaged, and ready to adapt. By leveraging partnerships, diverse training methods, and cross-functional exposure, organizations build resilience and competitive edge.
A skills-focused plan leads to engaged, adaptable HR talent who can meet new challenges and propel organizational transformation, positioning HR as a true strategic driver.
Ready to close your team’s skills gaps and unlock their potential?
Download our guide for a six-step guide to upskill and reskill your HR team.
