The World Economic Forum recommends that in order to meet the increased demands, we need to spend an average of 25 days per year on skills development. 25 days! That’s 11% of all working time, or about 4.5 days a week.
Many people probably don’t see themselves having that kind of time to spend. It’s a lot to do as it is.
But wait, do we just need to develop our skills on our own time? Nah, I think we need to rethink this. I have colleagues in the US and we usually talk about training when we train together in process development, process management, project management and more.
There is a clear difference here between Sweden and the US.
As employees in Sweden, we expect that professional development related to the profession should take place during working hours and be paid for by the employer. In the US, people are more inclined to educate themselves on their own initiative in order to increase their own value in the labour market.
So if we count all the days in a year available for skills development, the 25 days we need to allocate is about 7% of the year.
Skills development can be done in different ways.
We can quite easily sign up for an online course that we attend at home on our computer, sitting in the living room. Or we see that we can buy books in the field in which we operate and read up on our skills. We don’t need to go to a course centre with a price for both travel and accommodation. This makes it more affordable to pay for skills development yourself.
Colleagues in the US are seeing a clear trend where people are continuing their education with a clear plan to seek new positions within or outside their own organisation. Now we’re talking about business developers, or business analysts, as they’re called in English. The concept is broad, but let’s equate them for now.
In the discussions that I’m involved in, I see that people are directly comparing the salary increase of working as a business developer instead of whatever it is that they’re doing. “I make $80,000 a year now in my role as X, and can make $100,000 a year as a business developer.” Is it worth it then to spend $2,000 on a course that will allow you to seek a newly developed role?
No, it goes without saying that an investment of 15-20,000 SEK is a good one to be able to earn ten times as much in a year.
Here we are as individuals stuck in the same thought trap that we are in together when we consider whether it is worthwhile to develop the business for n kronor. We need to look at what these n crowns give us. If we only look at n crowns as a cost, we get nowhere. But if we see them as an investment with a payback period of a few months or maybe a year, well then the question is just how quickly we can make that investment.
My tip for the week is to take care of yourself.
Look at you and the skills development you could do.
- How can you become more competent?
- How can you make sure you’ll still be among the best in a few years?
- What keeps you from falling back and being overtaken?
- How can you benefit from developing your skills? Not only in dollars and cents, but also in well-being and self-esteem.
If you want to develop yourself further in the field of business development, improvement work, leadership, process management or project management, I am here to help you. Free of charge, we’ll meet for an online coffee and talk about where you see your development in this area.
What books are available?
Which course might be suitable?
Where are the exciting missions?
O s v.
Now I can hardly take care of everyone indefinitely. Even my time has limits. But despite that, I have weighted time for this over the next two weeks.
Would you like to have a chat with me and get something to reflect on while you’re in the hammock?
Then reply to this message and say that you are interested. Then we’ll book a time that suits us both.
Hope to hear from you,
Matts
