The Future of Upskilling: Human- and Technology-Centered

The technological progress, social and value change, sustainability, and climate change are few examples for current key drivers of transformation processes to which organizations are exposed. Due to the increasing speed of these changes, many employees may no longer apply the specialist knowledge they have acquired during their vocational education throughout their entire work life. Existing knowledge must be kept up to date, and new knowledge must be acquired to be competitive in the job market of the future. Against this background, the relevance of continuing education (upskilling) in the professional environment is increasing. Therefore, our aim with this article is to reflect on the future of upskilling and how it should respond to the challenges described above. In doing so, we identify three focal fields of action: First, new technologies and emerging trends should be the starting point for upskilling activities, as they lead to both new education content as well as new didactic learning formats. Second, organizations and humans (the learning employees) should be placed at the center of future upskilling activities. Humans are individuals with different levels of knowledge and skills as well as different learning behaviors. Third, there should be a closer connection between research and the practice of upskilling to transfer scientific findings quickly and easily into new and innovative learning formats.