You don’t have to listen too hard or for too long to anybody in the careers field before you’ll hear them talk about the importance of learning new skills and keeping your existing ones up-to-date. Why do we make such a big deal about it? Lots of reasons…
First of all, why do businesses employ people? Basically, it’s to help them solve problems. Okay, that’s fair enough, but how are you going to do that effectively if your skills are out-of-date? The solutions that you come up with are likely to be entirely inappropriate given ‘the way we do things now’. Not only that, but there’s every chance that your old ways of working will take more time and cost your employer more money.
An extreme example I know, but let’s assume that you’ve been working in the same office for years and years and never bothered to get the hang of a computer. When the boss asks you to prepare some figures, you dutifully sit there and work out your calculations on your trusty calculator and present him with your findings. ‘Great,’ he says. ‘Now just send these over to the clients in Belgium, France and Holland and the guys in Marketing, will you? They need them within the next half hour before the start of our teleconference.’ What are you going to do? Stick them in the mail? Take some photocopies and run round to the Marketing department to hand them out? Hardly a very effective solution and hardly a great use of your time!
As I said, an extreme example, but the fact is that technology is changing almost by the minute and research into just about every subject imaginable is constantly ongoing, turning up new findings, causing us to reassess our understanding and change the way that we do things. Marketplace trends change, as do demographics, the nation’s and the world’s economy and just about everything else, and all of these things have the potential to affect how you go about doing your job.
Essentially, if you don’t stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your line of business, the value that you have for your employer will be limited and you stand the chance of missing some truly significant opportunities to affect his bottom line, not to mention letting yourself slip behind your peers in the workplace and potentially destroying your chances of promotion. But if you’re already in a job, what is the value of learning new skills?
Off the top of my head, I can think of four very good reasons why learning new skills is important. The first, of course, is that it could increase your chances of promotion if the skills are ones which are required at the next level up. Secondly, however, it makes you more versatile and the more versatile you are, the more your value to your employer will be enhanced. Whether it’s a case of needing fresh ideas, volunteers to help out with a particular project or someone to stand in for a colleague on a temporary basis, imagine how you could stand out in the eyes of your employer by being able to step forward instead of him potentially having to pay someone else for the same skills?
Another important reason for learning new skills is less directly related to your boss, but is about the fact that becoming truly immersed in your job often makes it far more interesting for you. Instead of just carrying out the same tasks day in and day out, and probably all within your own little ‘work bubble’, it allows you to see the bigger picture and put things into context in ways which make your job feel far more fulfilling and exciting. In addition, as your levels of motivation begin to increase, so too does your performance, again making you stand out from those around you.
From that, comes a further benefit in that learning new skills provides opportunities to find a new, different and possibly better niche. In exposing yourself to new learning, you could find different or specialist areas which you might not only enjoy more, but in which you could truly excel.
Whether we’re talking about formal or on-the-job training, expanding your knowledge is not only advantageous in many ways, but essential in keeping yourself ahead of the pack. While it’s easy to see that fields such as IT require continual self-development, in fact every field and every position needs just the same type of commitment if you are to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Individuals can often be reluctant to put any extra effort into learning and updating their skills. In some cases they either consider that they can get along quite nicely if they continue to ‘coast’, although especially in today’s competitive job market where there are literally thousands of others out there who would be more than happy to replace you, this isn’t exactly the best strategy. In other cases though, the feeling is that the employer is already getting his money’s worth, so why should you go out of your way to do more? Simply because at the end of the day, although it benefits the employer, it benefits you more!
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