In general terms, making government more efficient is a laudable goal. Few people want agencies to waste taxpayer dollars. But workforce reductions and budget cuts have “under the hood” impacts that directly affect agencies’ ability to meet their missions and deliver services. Employees who remain at the agency often hesitate to stray beyond their specific roles. Workforces become less agile. And rather than focus on the knowledge that’s disappeared, for example, that the only person who understood a legacy system is now gone, leaders tend to focus on how many specific job titles they’ve lost.
You cannot upskill or reskill your way out of this situation. Employees must develop working knowledge of domains that are adjacent to their core expertise: Consider the security engineer who learns about AI frameworks, and then better protects the data that AI needs. Leaders must encourage and reward such curiosity and cross-skilling.
“The conversation we need to be having is not just how do we do more with less,” said Tony Holmes, Pluralsight’s Public Sector Practice Lead for Solutions Architects, “but how do we make sure the people we still have are resilient enough and versatile enough to carry on with the mission when everything’s changing on a week-to-week basis in the government space.”
In this video interview, Holmes discusses how cross-skilling can help public-sector employees develop the resiliency needed in today’s environment. Topics include:
- How cross-skilling differs from other training approaches
- Best practices for developing a curious, adaptable workforce
- Cross-skilling tools and techniques for government employees
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