Transforming Talent Through Upskilling
A fascinating session at this year’s C2HRCON, moderated by Diana Monk, VP of Talent Development at Charter Communications, featured panel members Amanda Newton, Director of Enterprise Skill Learning at Comcast, Rebecca Alimena, Senior Manager of Executive Talent Management at The Walt Disney Co.) and Deepali Vyas, Global Head of Data & AI Sector at ZRG Partners. The panel shared insights and rubber-hits-the-road experiences related to scalable, skills-first strategies.
 Definition
The discussion began with the question, “What does upskilling mean?”
Upskilling, as many of us have come to understand it, means identifying top talent and leaders, recognizing roles that need to be filled and strategizing how best to put the most fitting people into the roles.
Identifying the High Demand Skills
Company leaders occasionally become concerned that they are behind, especially regarding AI. Deepali Vyas of ZRG Partners advised that the best approach to alleviate worry is to tap into employees to identify the skills that are needed for current and anticipated future job functions in your company. She suggested using those functional findings to create a skills matrix and Venn diagram to visualize how talent needs might overlap.
More than one panelist stressed that to maintain clarity for your training offerings, you need to identify the skills to be acquired and the goals for the newly trained employees using a consistent, enterprise-wide vocabulary. Job titles come and go, but skills terminology provides a lasting way to communicate an understanding of organizational needs and desired outcomes.
After identifying the job roles and required skills, Comcast’s Amanda Newton suggested asking employees to name the five most important skills for next year. Be responsive to what they share by fine tuning your thinking and your strategy.
Comcast undertook an enterprise-wide skills initiative in 2024, demonstrating a 75% increase in their investment in training. They conducted skills-based assessments, researched business practices and closely connected the effort with emerging needs of the company. Comcast employees identified 2025’s top three skills as:
- AI literacy and tools
- Process optimization and simplification
- Human-digital collaboration.
Comcast is currently assessing the ROI, but they have seen enhanced employee engagement scores.
Recommended Training Approaches
With care and compassion rating highly important in employee engagement surveys, Rebecca Alimena of The Walt. Disney Co. recommended that throughout all L&D research, planning and content development, we need to listen and meet people where they are. She further suggested that we allow ourselves the freedom to experiment, as well as be adaptable — especially in times of change. Your approach and outcomes might not be perfect, but they certainly can be quite usable for your business. You can try a pilot and then learn from the feedback.
When experimenting with your upskilling approach, panelists recommended against attempting total transformation all at once. Instead, roll out a new training program to your identified champions or executives first.
Amanda shared another lesson learned: effective trainings can be just 15 to 30 minutes. This insight has transformed their comprehensive training strategy.
Lattice vs. Ladder Model
As a L&D professional, there is much to be learned once the training program is complete. Taking the time to evaluate results, with an eye on key metrics, will help you identify opportunities to fine tune, shift gears and possibly scale the training for enterprise-wide implementation.
Amanda noted three factors she and her colleagues learned and evaluated during her company’s recent experience:
- An employee’s emotional connection to the skill is important (i.e., “How do you feel now that the skill is present?”).
- Employees’ hands-on application of a new skill demonstrates the effectiveness of the training.
- Be sure to identify any tools needed to extend learning and combat the forgetting curve.
From this experience emerged the notion of workers tending to experience a lattice (not ladder) model, demonstrating that nonlinear career progression can capably meet company needs.
Rebecca reinforced that you might consider trying a pilot and then learning from the feedback for the next iteration. She recommends evaluating trainings and outcomes not with a “right or wrong” mindset, but instead, understand what trainees learned and retained.
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