Building Skills: Upskilling & Reskilling

Question 1

How Did GE Define & Develop its Skills Strategy?

Answer 1

We defined what digital industrial should become. We did it in a number of ways. First we realised there was a need to build a new set of digital skills for our internal culture and mindset, to drive internal productivity in the organization, cost improvement, and we called this part of the strategy being “GE for GE” where we took the step to assess our internal abilities to listen and learn more effectively.

We wanted our employees to take that leap from yesterday’s conversations on skills such as Six Sigma, software servers and administration, data warehousing and move to today’s conversations around data analytics, lean and design thinking, industrial internet and advanced manufacturing. Those are the skills we wanted to build internally buildings internal digital capability programmes within the organization.

Question 2

What is Phase 1 of GE’s Skills Strategy?

Answer 2

The first phase included our appetite to upgrade internal tools in the organization. What intentional actions we were taking to amplify personal productivity. As a company wide activity we started to offer numerous self-paced offerings: From Moocs to smart bits, to digital brand ambassador programmes that really helped to move the needle around our digital internal credibility.

Question 3

What is Phase 2 of GE’s Skills Strategy?

Answer 3

Then phase 2, was with these new internal muscles and new capabilities that we built, we then set out to develop a set of industrial applications and advanced Digital skills that we hoped would help our customers transform too.