Benefits and Challenges of Employee Reskilling Using Agile Approach

Facing strong industry pressures, an Indonesian telecommunications company formulates a transformation strategy. The company aims to perform business refocusing to exploit the growing business-to-business (B2B) market. Consequently, the employees need a reskilling program from business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing to B2B marketing. However, there are complexities and uncertainties in managing the reskilling program. From the information and technology field, agile approaches offer methodologies for managing a project amidst high uncertainties and external changes. Currently, research on how agile approaches benefit non-information technology projects such as reskilling is few. This research aims to explore the key benefits and challenges in implementing a reskilling program with an agile framework. Methodology applied in this study includes secondary data analysis, interviews and thematic analysis to gain insight from qualitative data collection. The interview results indicate that an agile approach benefits participants by vast learning opportunities, strengthening their understanding of new target markets, and gaining confidence and a new mindset in conducting B2B sales. Moreover, the challenges that must be addressed are that the generalized journey design does not effectively cater to the diverse needs of all participants, as well as difficulties in managing time to balance initial assignments and mastering product knowledge within a short timeframe.