Employee upskilling made easy: Why an LMS is the best solution

When it comes to business, you are only as good as your people. What does this mean? You can have the most ambitious and well-thought-out business strategy and still fail if your workforce doesn’t have the skills to realize it.

That’s why upskilling and reskilling employees is quintessential. Maybe now more than ever, with AI shifting the desired skill sets overnight.

According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Report 2025 [1], organizations that prioritize career development outperform other businesses on multiple positive indicators. The most important ones include the ability to attract and retain the top talent in the job market, and to be at the forefront of AI adoption.

So the question is, do you want to lead? Or do you want to follow?

This blog post explains everything you need to know about employee upskilling, including:

• The difference between upskilling and reskilling
• Limitations of traditional training methods
• Why an LMS is the best option to hone new skills
• An easy-to-follow 5-step plan
• 3 common barriers and how to overcome them

What is employee upskilling?

Employee upskilling refers to employees deepening and expanding existing skills rather than cultivating new skills.

The term refers to technical skills, which vary wildly:

• Copywriting, graphic design
• Web development
• SEO and marketing
• Machine learning and AI
• Data analysis
• Regulatory knowledge
• Proficiency in work tools (like PM and CRM platforms)

It also refers to soft skills, like:

• Leadership and strategic planning
• Critical thinking, problem solving
• Communication, negotiation
• DEI

Often confused with upskilling, reskilling refers to obtaining new skills rather than improving existing ones. Think about a web developer who starts learning a new programming language—that’s upskilling. But if they take a course on graphic design, that’s reskilling.

According to the Future of Jobs report 2025 [2],

Limitations of traditional upskilling methods

There are many ways to help employees develop new skills and broaden their career paths, but some traditional methods have clear drawbacks and get in the way of building a culture of continuous learning. Let’s see why traditional approaches often fall short.

Instructor-led training

Instructor-led training (ILT) refers to training delivered by an instructor in real time. While it is an excellent way to interact and engage with learners, it also comes with significant disadvantages that make it an unrealistic option for continuous development.

• Time commitment: Employees are required to either disrupt their workflow or sacrifice their free time to attend a training event.
• High cost: Paying for an instructor is a cost that not all companies can afford. If the sessions are held in multiple locations by the same instructor, travel and accommodation expenses will overstretch your training budget.
• Limited reach and scalability: The bigger the company, the harder it becomes to scale ILT training due to the increased cost and complexity involved in organizing the sessions.
• Inconsistent quality across audiences: It can be challenging to ensure a consistent standard of training when sessions are delivered to different groups and by different instructors.
• Lack of reporting and performance tracking: Traditional ILT often lacks mechanisms to evaluate and track employee training.

Stand-alone course libraries

Course libraries offer self-paced, off-the-shelf courses on a variety of topics. While they offer a wide range of options and flexibility, they are ultimately not effective for employee development:

• Lack of personalization: Ready-made content doesn’t take into account learning preferences, job-specific needs, or company culture. As a result, engagement and even effectiveness suffer.
• Limited skills tracking: It’s hard to assess whether employees have actually honed the necessary skills unless they directly apply them on the job.

Talent marketplaces

Talent marketplaces are platforms within an organization that match employees to internal upskilling opportunities based on their interests and career progression goals. They are designed to promote internal mobility and help employees grow new skills through a hands-on approach.

Although real-world application is a plus, talent marketplaces are ultimately quite limiting:

• Lack of structure: On-the-job learning can be great, but it’s usually unstructured—there are few (if any) learning materials, and there’s no detailed progress tracking or assessment methods.
• Inconsistency: You can’t realistically rely on talent marketplaces if you want to bridge skills gaps and build career paths. Learning opportunities through these platforms come randomly and are not aligned with an employee’s individual career development plan.

Why an LMS is the best upskilling platform

A Learning Management System (LMS) brings everything you need for upskilling into one place and helps you shape tailored career paths for every employee. Here’s why it’s such a good choice for building relevant skills across your organization:

Centralized skills inventory and gap analysis

Features like skills mapping, skills intelligence tools, surveys, and employee assessments enable you to see exactly what skills your workforce has, where the gaps are, and who needs what training. Fostering a continuous learning culture becomes easy when you know where your needs lie.

Personalized learning paths

Not every employee needs the same content; different job roles, level of experience, and even learning preferences must be taken into account. A good LMS allows you to offer different types of content, AI-driven learning paths, segment learners based on your desired criteria, and drip-feed content to ensure maximum knowledge retention.

Microlearning

Long courses can feel overwhelming. Microlearning breaks training into bite‑sized lessons that are easier to fit into the day and much easier to remember. It can be all the more helpful for new employees who have so much new information to obtain.

Mobile access

Your people aren’t tied to their desks, so your learning shouldn’t be either. With a dedicated mobile app, employees can learn anytime, anywhere and enjoy a seamless learning experience.

Engagement features

The best LMS platforms keep learners coming back with features like gamification, social learning communities, and digital certifications that reward progress and celebrate achievements.

Analytics & ROI dashboards

With an LMS, you’ll always know what’s working. Track usage data, see completion rates, and even correlate training with performance metrics to prove the impact of your upskilling efforts.

The table below sums up what LMSs and traditional methods offer in terms of cost, engagement, and tracking:

Our platform, LearnWorlds, is a top-rated AI-powered LMS that combines ease of use, advanced learning features, deep reporting, and so much more that you simply need to see for yourself.

Sign up for your 30-day free trial now.

5-step LMS-powered upskilling rollout

In the sake of keeping things simple, we have created a simple 5-step plan for you to follow when using an LMS for upskilling.

Step 1: Inventory current skills & map future gaps

You can’t design training programs without first knowing where your organization stands. What skills do your employees already have? Where are the skills gaps that hinder their career development and very likely your business success?

There’s more than one way to measure skills gaps:

• One-to-one interviews with employees and managers
• 360° performance evaluations
• Employee surveys

Prevention is better than cure, though, so don’t stop at current gaps. Look ahead to anticipate future needs and business priorities to inform and shape your reskilling initiatives today.

You don’t need any magical powers for this—just sound strategic planning. Evaluate your current situation and review your business roadmap to forecast which roles and skills will be critical. By doing this, you will build a strong internal talent pool and promote within your current employees.

Step 2: Personalize by segmenting learners

Personalization is key to offering the most suitable development opportunities and increasing not only productivity but also employee engagement. Start by segmenting learners based on role, department, seniority, experience level, and career goals, as these have been discussed in advance with their managers or mentors. This segmentation allows you to assign training paths that resonate with each employee, instead of offering one-size-fits-all content.

Step 3: Build blended curricula

The best upskilling programs combine synchronous (live) and asynchronous (self‑paced) learning elements, and whenever possible, hands‑on practice with an expert for more advanced skills.

Key benefits of blended learning:

• Employees stay engaged thanks to interactive activities or elements, such as quizzes and videos.
• Learning happens faster and more effectively because different formats (videos, webinars, PDFs, and assignments) reinforce retention.
• Practical application cements knowledge, allowing employees to immediately use new skills on the job.

Step 4: Launch pilots to gather feedback

Before rolling out your upskilling program company-wide, make it available to a small group of employees to collect feedback, especially if this is your first upskilling and reskilling attempt. Doing so will help you gauge employee sentiment toward the program: Is it relevant enough? Is it engaging? What can be improved?

Step 5: Measure impact, iterate, expand

Collecting employee feedback is even more important at the end of every upskilling program. Send out employee surveys or embed them in your LMS at the end of the course or even specific lessons.

Measuring the impact on the job is essential for your organization’s success. Key upskilling metrics include job performance and productivity. In the long run, you should also see an impact on job satisfaction and employee retention, especially if you have established a continuous learning culture.

Another way to measure the impact of your upskilling program is by monitoring performance and how employees have responded to it. Check data like completion rates, number of certificates issued, and time spent on individual activities.

👉LearnWorlds offers an advanced report system enhanced with conversational AI for faster access to insights. The reports can be customized and some can additionally be scheduled. The Training and Activity Matrixes give you a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in your training academy, from overall course performance and training status to individual learner progress and engagement.

Overcoming barriers to your upskilling strategy

There are three common barriers to upskilling and reskilling programs: time, budget, and adoption. Let’s see how you can move past them and effectively support the career development of your employees and instill a culture of lifelong learning.

Time

Time constraints are a common challenge standing in the way of workforce development. These can concern both the time you need to design and roll out a program, but also the limited time available for training on the part of your employees despite the best intentions from both sides.

From your part:

• For more generic new skills, such as soft skills or learning to use a new tool, off‑the‑shelf content is a fast and reliable option.
• If you need something more tailored, a course development company can create custom content designed for your specific needs.
• In case you’re not happy with any of these options and need to develop the content on your own, choose an LMS that is both robust and easy to use. Some corporate LMSs are overly complex or missing essential components, like authoring tools or AI features, so make sure you pick an all-in-one platform.

See how we saved time building our own academy, with the help of AI:

From your employees’ perspective:

• Deliver the courses in microlearning format. Bite‑sized content delivers essential-only information, which makes it a lot easier to digest and retain. It’s perfect for imparting new skills fast.
• Ensure all upskilling and reskilling programs are accessible on mobile devices. Choose an LMS with a dedicated mobile app, like LearnWords, to enjoy features like learning reminders, offline access, and in‑app notifications that keep learners engaged and make the overall experience smoother.

Budget

Budget constraints are often one of the biggest challenges when rolling out upskilling initiatives. The good news is that there are smart ways to make the most of your resources without sacrificing the quality of your training programs:

• A content marketplace can be a cost‑effective choice if you don’t require fully custom content.
• Choose a budget-friendly LMS that fits your actual needs. Do not get carried away by expensive platforms and shiny features that you won’t even need. Instead, choose a scalable LMS that will allow you to start small and expand as your employee development needs grow.

👉 See some of the best affordable LMS solutions here.

• Use content you already have. Reuse and repurpose materials you already have rather than starting from scratch.
• Use AI to speed up content creation. AI tools can help reduce development time and dependency on external providers and elearning professionals by transforming existing assets, like turning articles into guides, scripts, or videos, and refining them for your learners
• Leverage in-house expertise. Your more experienced employees are often the best subject matter experts and mentors for your upskilling and reskilling programs.

Adoption

Even the best upskilling strategy can fail if employees don’t actually use the learning resources available to them. Adoption barriers often stem from a lack of awareness and insufficient motivation, and of course when the program doesn’t cultivate skills employees find relevant.

• Don’t just announce the program—explain its impact. Employees must understand why the program exists, how it supports their career growth and how their new skills will improve their daily workflow.
• Involve business leaders. Adoption skyrockets when managers actively encourage participation, discuss learning goals in 1:1s, and celebrate progress. Equip managers with talking points and dashboards to track their team’s development.
• Embed learning in daily workflows. Integrate your LMS with tools employees already use (like Slack, Teams, or email). Send regular and timely nudges and reminders to help learning become part of the flow of work.
• Recognize and reward learning. Offer certificates, badges, or shout‑outs when employees complete courses or apply new skills. Public recognition builds momentum and inspires others.
• Make sure the learning experience is intuitive and frictionless. If the platform is clunky, sign‑in is difficult, or navigation is confusing, people won’t stick around.

Need help choosing an LMS? Read our ebook “The 5 non-negotiables when choosing your LMS” to see which features should not miss from your LMS no matter what type of training you want to build.

Upskilling is the new competitive advantage

Make no mistake. Ongoing upskilling (and reskilling where necessary) is the single best way to keep up with technological advances, support your employees’ career growth, and sustain a successful business.

In this blog post, we’ve shared essential strategies to help you empower employees and hone new skills that are vital. Before you go, sign up for a 30-day free trial with LearnWorlds, the LMS that will help you bring it all to life.

References:

1. Workplace Learning Report 2025
2. Future of Jobs report 2025

Androniki Koumadoraki

Androniki is a Content Writer at LearnWorlds sharing Instructional Design and marketing tips. With solid experience in B2B writing and technical translation, she is passionate about learning and spreading knowledge. She is also an aspiring yogi, a book nerd, and a talented transponster.