Companies today need innovative answers—answers that do more than just provide a solution, but do so without causing a heavy strain on resources. This necessity can leave companies scrambling for months. Fortunately, upskilling initiatives can do exactly this, and they aren’t a luxury. Here are some proven, budget-friendly solutions, gathered from 15 industry leaders.

“Let’s start by unleashing the hidden potential within your team.” Ashley Kenny, co-founder of Heirloom Video Books, emphasizes, “Actively listening to your employees’ aspirations and creating spaces for knowledge exchange is key.” 

Next, harness the power of peer-to-peer learning through informal “Lunch and Learn” sessions. Sarah Ratekin, Chief Happiness Officer at Happiness Is Courage, champions these gatherings led by passionate employees.

Or, consider carving out dedicated time for self-improvement. Meghan Anzelc, President of Three Arc Advisory, highlights the success of “allocating specific hours for employees to pursue their learning goals.” You can cultivate a growth mindset within your organization by empowering employees to seek new skills and knowledge. 

Remember, upskilling doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor. By leveraging the ingenuity and talents of your employees, you can unlock a wealth of valuable skills and create a future-proof workforce ready to take on any challenge. Discover these, and twelve more insightful takes on providing smart, lean upskilling initiatives.

Establish an internal knowledge base

As leaders, we are responsible for creating a future-proof work environment and allowing employees to reskill and upskill. One low-lift upskilling initiative for businesses with limited resources is the establishment of a knowledge base within the organization. We’ve done this for our business, and it helps both employees and clients learn all about working with our software.

This can look vastly different depending on the business, but essentially, you build a virtual knowledge-sharing space where employees can share their expertise, insights, and best practices with their colleagues.

Creating an internal learning culture is very motivational. It taps into our need to be helpful, our curiosity to learn more, and overall promotes collaboration and team bonding. This initiative requires minimal financial investment, as it primarily relies on harnessing the internal talent pool you’re already working with.

Tracking success can be done in many ways. For instance, you could create an internal certification program where you separate your knowledge base into modules that end with a skills test. And don’t forget to allow your employees to apply their knowledge to real projects; otherwise, they might feel unfulfilled.

Additionally, I’d like to add a little note to leaders as well: It’s not just your employees that need to upskill. If you want to scale your business to meet your desired outcomes, you must be prepared to learn and adjust your plans as often as needed.

Stefan Chekanov, CEO, Brosix

Introduce skill-sharing Fridays

Each Friday, employees were encouraged to share a skill or knowledge area in which they excel, whether related to their job or a personal interest. This not only created a collaborative learning environment but also tapped into the diverse expertise within the team. To ensure success, we set up a feedback loop where participants could provide input on the sessions and suggest improvements. 

The offbeat element was introducing a casual, rotating format, allowing different team members to lead each week. This not only addressed the resource constraints but also made upskilling a dynamic and engaging part of our company culture, fostering continuous learning and skill development.

Ben Richardson, director, Acuity Training

Host biweekly in-house learning sessions

Your departments can all learn from each other. At Ling, we host biweekly learning sessions, whether it’s learning a new language (we’re a language app), learning how to make edits to the website, or attending our valuable growth leadership sessions. Our team can choose to attend sessions they feel would be of value to them. There are no extra costs associated with this, and employee feedback has been that these in-house skill sessions are valuable and provide a relaxed environment to learn.

Jarir Mallah, HR manager, Ling App

Implement a professional development book club

For businesses with limited resources, one low-lift upskilling initiative could be implementing a book club focused on professional development. This initiative involves selecting a thought-provoking book related to the industry or desired skills and encouraging employees to read it within a specified timeframe. 

To ensure successful implementation and track progress, businesses can create discussion groups where employees can share insights and ideas from the book. Furthermore, organizing monthly or quarterly meetings to discuss key takeaways and encourage further learning will help sustain interest in the program. 

An example of this initiative’s success comes from my previous company, where we established a book club centered around leadership development for our sales team. We chose ‘Dare to Lead’ by Brené Brown as our inaugural book and provided copies to all participants. Over the course of two months, employees read the book during their own time and engaged in group discussions facilitated by designated leaders within the team. 

The key takeaway from implementing this upskilling initiative was threefold:

• Boosted employee engagement: The book club created an inclusive environment that encouraged open dialogue among team members who would not typically interact.
• Improved communication: The club discussion acted like an icebreaker and paved the way for coworkers in different departments to start speaking and interacting more regularly. Not to mention, the book discussion helped employees learn how to explain their opinions and insights and actively listen to peers.
• New perspectives and skills: The reading facilitated the adoption and development of soft skills team members could use across multiple roles and industries. 

Rather than focusing solely on job-specific competencies, the club developed soft skills that benefited team members across many areas of their professional and personal life, and often acted as a foundation for them to learn other professional skills.

Michael Alexis, CEO, Virtual Team Building

Launch ‘Work Better Wednesdays‘

I’ve always been fond of Work Better Wednesdays, which is essentially just a short, 30-minute meeting each week where someone from the organization volunteers or is chosen to present a quick life or work hack that is practical to the job at hand. Someone from the BI team can show people the basics of Tableau and give them some links to learn more. A member of the cybersecurity team can show them how to properly screen emails. A data analyst can give them three or four tips and tricks for using Excel more efficiently.

It costs you nothing, is fairly low effort as the sessions should be about something used every day by the team member in question, and is very well received because it skips the theory and moves right to the practicalities.

Dragos Badea, CEO, Yarooms

Provide personalized coaching in 1:1s

Use your one-on-one meetings to give personalized coaching to employees. Don’t overthink it by building resource-intensive upskilling programs—the work begins with sharing real, in-the-moment feedback. 

For example, I’m terrible at negotiating. My manager knows this, and he pushes me to do it more often. We discuss examples frequently, and he gives me pointers on what I could have done differently. Then, he makes sure I have the opportunity to negotiate again in the near future.

Cari Murray, director of Marketing, Marvin

Encourage employee-driven upskilling

My interpretation of the meaning of upskilling our staff may take a unique direction. As a successful professional, I faced a ladder that I worked hard to climb. I knew at the time of each progressive rung that there was a wonderful opportunity to face, often successfully, because I was upskilled by thoughtful and well-meaning colleagues and leaders. I strive to replicate this environment with my style of clever, relatively low-lift upskilling initiatives for my team. 

One key way to implement this strategy is to invite your staff to tell you what they see in the operation that they want to learn more about, rather than asking my managers to select the upskilling efforts for individual team members. One example of a successful story is when our customer service team member asked to learn about the way in which our customers find us on the Internet. This team member was admittedly unfamiliar with the ins and outs of internet search rankings, including those that drive potential customers to our site. 

We offered her a significant amount of information, including instruction that supported her interest in writing meaningful articles to assist our customers. In this way, her skills and voice have been utilized to her delight. Our company has directly benefited from the measured increase in our internet presence.

Ashley Kenny, cofounder, Heirloom Video Books

Provide training on role-specific AI tools

To address the lack of upskilling opportunities, especially in a world where AI is changing every industry, a great initiative is training employees on AI tools relevant to their roles. This not only helps in upskilling but also in reducing apprehension about being replaced by technology.

To make this more engaging, you can turn it into a friendly contest. Each team member will find and present one role-specific AI use case that can make their work much more efficient. The best AI solutions discovered can be shared with the whole team, making everyone more productive and AI-aware.

To get this going, set up the challenge with clear goals and maybe a small incentive to spark interest. Track how these AI tools are adopted and used within the team, and keep an eye on any positive changes in productivity or efficiency. This approach not only upskills your team in a crucial area but does so in a way that’s fun and directly beneficial to their everyday tasks, fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Juliet Dreamhunter, founder, Juliety

Give access to online learning platforms

Offering free access to online learning platforms like Skillshare is a low-lift, high-impact upskilling initiative that businesses, even those with limited resources, can implement. This strategy allows employees to personally choose their learning paths, enhancing both their job performance and satisfaction. In our own experience, we set specific learning goals with each team member, focusing on areas like UI design and software mastery.

We tracked progress through regular discussions about how they applied new skills at work. This approach not only boosted our team’s capabilities but also their morale and loyalty, as they felt genuinely valued and supported in their professional growth. The key takeaway? Investing in your team’s development pays off, fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Juan Carlos Munoz, cofounder, CC Creative Design

Organize in-house workshops and coaching

Team members write monthly reports about their challenges, lessons, and goals. This helps us identify common themes. When we see a pattern, we organize a company-wide internal workshop. 

All workshops happen live in our Slack and are led by someone on the team who is an expert on the subject. Workshops are accompanied by a practical task, a guide, and consecutively have a thread where everyone can post any follow-up questions. Super simple, yet people appreciate the learning experience; we’ve registered consistent work quality improvements, and team members are now proactively posting workshop ideas. 

Additionally, we organize one-on-one sessions once a year with all team members where they’re given a safe space to share their feedback, how they’d like to grow within the company, and what the company can do to support that growth. Then, when the right opportunity arises, we know the exact person to turn to. 

The best advice is to not overcomplicate things. Use what you already have. Ask team members about their interests. Identify a common topic. Have someone, who is already doing a great job with this, prepare a workshop (they’ll be thrilled with the recognition). Most times, a PowerPoint presentation will do fine. Do the workshop. Collect feedback. Improve and repeat.

Katya Dimova, content manager, Financer.com

Adopt microlearning

I believe that the best upskilling format for businesses with limited resources is microlearning. Among the key advantages of this approach are time efficiency, affordable pricing, and highly personalized learning flows. 

Microlearning platforms provide access to vast knowledge in a concise and easily accessible format. Employees get the way to quickly obtain just-in-time knowledge during short breaks between their daily tasks and use the information right away to progress toward business objectives efficiently. 

Thus, microlearning increases engagement and makes it easy for employees to track their educational input. Besides, most microlearning solutions provide skill-testing tools that help identify employee strengths and areas for improvement, as well as dashboards that demonstrate performance patterns throughout the learning journey.

Anton Pavlovsky, CEO and founder, Headway EdTech

Create an internal academy with generative AI tools

Building an internal academy is a crucial initiative for businesses looking to upskill their employees. People are the biggest asset in every company, and with the advent of generative AI tools, creating engaging training content is no longer a complex and expensive task. There are many AI tools available that can help you generate compelling video- and text-based training content in just a few minutes and with a small budget. 

After producing content, L&D/HR managers can use free LMS systems to create training courses with quizzes and track progress. At Elai, we have assisted hundreds of L&D and HR teams, ranging from small SMBs to large enterprises such as Beiersdorf, Generali, Deloitte, etc., in producing professional L&D video content at scale.

Vitalii Romanchenko, CEO, Elai.io

Facilitate peer learning with coffee breaks

On Tuesdays and Fridays, we have “Coffee Break Champions” sessions. These are 20-minute sessions during which an employee shares their best skill with other team members in an informal setting. It can be weightlifting techniques or nutrition-related. 

We believe if everyone contributes, everyone benefits, so a different employee leads every session. We use feedback from our suggestion box and internal channels to understand our employees’ aspirations. We then partner with team leaders to identify areas where each team member needs growth. The last session for every month is planned around topics members might need help with. 

We follow up with the team through their leaders, monitor our client feedback, and compare it to initial feedback to see if our upskilling training is effective. Torokhity Weightlifting thrives as a team. We believe communal effort goes a long way, and progress, no matter how little, adds to significant gains.

Oleksiy Torokhtiy, founder, Torokhtiy Weightlifting

Set time blocks for professional development

One organization I worked for implemented time blocks for individual professional development. Department-wide, everyone set aside a few hours per week to work on one of their skill development goals for the year. 

Some people pursued self-study, some took free or low-cost massive open online courses (MOOCs), some worked on a side project to learn a new coding language or try a new tool. Everyone loved this approach, and over the course of a year, not only upskilled themselves but also generated new ideas and approaches for their team members to use as well. 

The takeaway: You don’t need expensive training or massive resources to provide employees with upskilling opportunities. You can have those things and still not make progress if employees don’t have permission to use some of their work hours to pursue skill development. Authorizing team members to carve out and protect an agreed-upon amount of time per week or month goes a long way and empowers employees to take charge of their own upskilling and professional development.

Meghan Anzelc, Ph.D., president, chief data and analytics officer, Three Arc Advisory

Host employee-led lunch and learn sessions

One client I worked with was reeling from their recent employee sentiment survey, where the vast majority of respondents were “highly dissatisfied” with their upskilling and professional development opportunities. Budgets were tight, but coming out of the turmoil of the pandemic, leadership was deeply concerned about turnover and eNPS and needed a win—fast. 

Our solution? “Lunch and Learn” sessions. Simple, no-frills workshops led by employees on topics they were passionate about. We designated regular slots for these sessions and encouraged interaction and discussion. We coached managers to invite people to present on topics even if they weren’t part of their formal job description, sparking a surprising level of excitement by letting people show off their “hidden” skills. We also created a shared resource hub for easy access and an internal channel for follow-up conversations on the topics.

Tracking success was straightforward. We collected feedback after each session and monitored attendance and participation. Because topics were crowd-sourced and we encouraged the session leaders to build the buzz with their colleagues, we got better buy-in than previous Lunch and Learns had seen, and people were generally excited to share the topics where they felt they could shine.

The outcome exceeded our expectations. Team morale improved, engagement was higher than ever in project meetings, and the overall culture shifted in a really positive way. Leadership got to showcase their commitment to not just listening but also doing something about the feedback they were getting, and staff felt invested in the action plan to make improvements—win-win.

Sarah Ratekin, chief happiness officer, Happiness Is Courage.