Cloud is changing everything. It’s changing the way teams look, how they are created and what their focus is. And with its rapid change and growing complexity, cloud is forcing us to change the way we train and upskill our teams to keep up with it. This new paradigm, as exciting as it's been, hasn't been an easy one to adapt to.

70% of leaders recently surveyed said that the biggest hurdle they face when moving to the cloud is the shortage of skills. Truth is, most leaders don’t feel comfortable that their teams are ready to tackle all that comes with moving to the cloud. So, how do you face this challenge head on?

We gathered insights from experts who are successfully skilling up their teams on cloud. When you're ready to make the move (which should be now), take a page from their book.

“Cloud is disruptive, so it isn’t just skills change, it is a mindset change. People aren’t just going to ‘know cloud’.” -- Leigh Ann Seidensticker 

The way you think about skilling up in cloud has to be bigger than “we are going to spend today doing cloud training”. It’s a large, ongoing process in which continuous upskilling must happen. The learning can’t simply be transactional. 

“Cloud learning must be transformative. You must have a culture of learning. You must teach your team members how to be innovators, disruptors and real strategists. We aren’t skilling up to learn a technology, we are skilling up to be ready for new innovation that they can drive with cloud technology. Team members are not maintainers—they must become innovators.” -- Rochana Golani 

Working towards aligning a team so that they can operate at scale and collaborate is vital to cloud migration. You need to ensure every learner can see how their current role can and will transform into a cloud role, and build a framework that helps leaders measure where people’s skills are, and where they need to be. 

Diversity will also play a large role in executing on your cloud strategy. Are you going to the sites where women and diverse candidates exist to make sure your hiring pool is as diverse as possible? Are you allowing your employees to come as themselves to work everyday? Are you creating an environment where employees can speak up if they are on a team that lacks diversity? These questions are paramount to building a diverse team who can ensure your cloud strategy is successful.

Sometimes getting everyone on board takes time and investing in a few key players at the beginning can make all the difference. Start by getting your leaders skilled up in cloud, even if they are non-technology employees. HR and people teams also need to understand the basic skills of cloud in order to recruit and help up-skill current team members—so give them access to resources. 

“Learning strategists need to be skilled up and and get up to speed on what is cloud, what it means, and have a basic understanding of what they are asking their employees to get on board for.” -- Kristen Fry

When you take a closer look at the roles you need, you can better prepare for the upskilling of your team. Where you are in your cloud journey will determine the skill building that is required. If you need to modernize infrastructure, the roles you need will be different than if you need to develop applications to transform your business. In most cases, partnering with HR to understand what your learning path should be and what roles to hire for is essential. 

Skills for cloud come through experience and they come over time. Think of it like this: You can watch cooking videos all you want, but until you actually try a recipe for yourself, the skills are just theoretical. 

This is why things like hands-on labs are so important. Every learner is different, but all of that learning needs real experience and practice. Making sure that practical application is available with things like game-based learning and challenges can be incredibly effective in getting your team upskilled in cloud in a real way. But it isn’t just about hands-on, other resources are also important. 

“Make sure that when there is a technology to learn that is as vast as cloud, your team has access mentors and instructors that people in order to address challenges quickly. On-demand learning, labs and access to experts are all important.” 

With so many different types of learners, you have to have several ways to tap into skills. If everyone on the team is just “doing” and not learning, there is no space to create new skills. Ultimately, it is up to the organization to build a space for learning and when that happens, everyone will feel encouraged and recognize they are in a safe space to future proof their careers.

As a leader, you have to believe in and curate these skill building opportunities. This means bringing together and leveraging content that already exists, but moving away from classroom-based training that can’t keep up with change. You can’t waste time on planning specific training opportunities. This is one of the reasons why building skills on Pluralsight creates successful teams: The content is always fresh and can be accessed immediately. 

“We can’t do things like spend three months organizing an onsite learning event because by the time we’d host it, things have already changed. Content needs to get to people fast.” --Krisen Fry 

One of the best ways to create a learning continuum is to recognize employees when they reach skill building milestones. This can be a hard code to crack, but a major motivator in your organization. Things like having direct managers (rather than ‘ivory tower executives) making the requests of their teams to build new skills, and showing employees that cloud skills are the wave of the future, can help incentivize employees in new ways. 

“We have found that the closer we can get to learners the more the message resonates. This creates relevance and context, and isn’t an email from the very top, it’s from a leader they work with everyday. We also do an employee value proposition -- pointing out to people that these new skills are marketable and that they WANT these skills.” -- Kristen Fry 

And never underestimate the power of swag, or putting employees photos up in a ‘wall of fame’. But understand that, in the end, there is nothing more motivating than creating relevant skills to help employees grow in their careers. 

Ultimately, it is about the individual recognizing that their skills are being valued. As leaders, make sure that your employees know that opportunities are out there where they can build their skills. Don’t wait until they feel like they have to ask.” -- Leigh Ann Seidensticker  

Right now.

Don’t wait to get your team building cloud skills and working towards your digital transformation. This process takes time and the sooner you can get everyone in your organization on board, the better. 

Sometimes getting everyone on board takes time and investing in a few key players at the beginning can make all the difference. Start by getting your leaders skilled up in cloud, even if they are non-technology employees. HR and people teams also need to understand the basic skills of cloud in order to recruit and help up-skill current team members—so give them access to resources. 

“Learning strategists need to be skilled up and and get up to speed on what is cloud, what it means, and have a basic understanding of what they are asking their employees to get on board for.” -- Kristen Fry

Diversity will also play a large role in executing on your cloud strategy. Are you going to the sites where women and diverse candidates exist to make sure your hiring pool is as diverse as possible? Are you allowing your employees to come as themselves to work everyday? Are you creating an environment where employees can speak up if they are on a team that lacks diversity? These questions are paramount to building a diverse team who can ensure your cloud strategy is successful. 

Moving to cloud is hard. Skilling up in cloud is harder. But making sure that we still have a diverse balanced team in this new cloud-first paradigm is an even harder challenge. And yet, all of them are within reach.

To learn more about building a team aligned for cloud adoption, check out this LIVE session,  “Taking your team’s cloud skills to the next level”