---
id: "concept-reskilling-vs-upskilling"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["¶3"]
tags: ["talent-development", "occupational-change"]
related: ["concept-half-life-of-skills", "claim-upskilling-insufficient"]
definition: "Upskilling enhances an employee's ability in their current role, whereas reskilling equips an employee with entirely new skills to transition into a completely different occupation."
sources: ["reskilling"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-reskilling"
originDay: 10
articleStem: "hbr-edu-34-reskilling-in-age-of-ai"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2023/09/reskilling-in-the-age-of-ai"
sourceTitle: "Reskilling in the Age of AI"
---
# Reskilling vs. Upskilling

**Upskilling** teaches employees new, advanced skills to perform their *current* jobs better. **Reskilling** is a fundamentally more complex organizational and societal challenge: it requires workers to acquire entirely new skill sets with the explicit goal of *changing occupations*.

The authors argue that although companies are investing heavily in upskilling — **up to 1.5% of total budgets, per BCG** ([[entity-bcg-d34]]) — this alone will not counter the macroeconomic disruption predicted by the OECD ([[entity-oecd]]). Millions of workers will need to be *entirely reskilled* to transition out of eliminated roles and into newly created ones. The compression of the [[concept-half-life-of-skills|half-life of skills]] is what makes this shift from upskilling to reskilling urgent — see [[claim-upskilling-insufficient]].

**Enrichment note.** This distinction maps onto the broader "skills-based organization" (SBO) movement (McKinsey, Deloitte): deconstructing roles into tasks and skills, then matching people to work via [[concept-skill-adjacencies|skill adjacencies]] and internal talent marketplaces rather than job titles.


## Related across articles
- [[action-reskill-automation-roles]]
- [[action-upskill-augmentation-roles]]
- [[claim-role-specific-upskilling]]