There’s one thing that we hear constantly from our customers and partners it’s that there’s a huge gap between the supply and demand for robotic process automation (RPA) talent. We never want a lack of trained RPA talent to be a challenge for scaling your RPA efforts.

Digital transformation looks very different at every company and is based on your organization’s vision, challenges, and demands. But setting up your automation program for success starts always with putting the right people in place — and creating a training strategy to develop the necessary skills across your organization.

Here are our top five steps to building out your automation training framework:

1. Identifying skills gaps in your organization.

It’s important to understand the audience’s (in this case, employees’) skills and responsibilities in order to create a tailored learning plan.

We’ve created a matrix based on working with our customers that is a useful starting point. An automation competency matrix is used to evaluate where your team already has the expertise and what areas need a little more attention.

2. Based on the needs, create role-based learning plans.

While general training provides a basic understanding of RPA, the trick is to choose and deliver training content in a digestible manner so that employees can apply it to their roles. When designing role-based training, it is wise to start by getting a better understanding of the staff who will be taking the training.

Learning about your ‘audience’ can be done by reviewing internal documents and procedures, conducting interviews, observing team members while they’re on the job, or even spending time in the employee’s shoes.

This knowledge will help ensure that the automation training is significant and impactful.

3. Train the trainers to build a self-sustaining learning model.

To scale up your training program, you’ll need to identify and nurture a group of internal trainers. The trainers will deliver learning content on your behalf in different regions and languages.

Train the trainer is a framework for training potential instructors or subject matter experts to enable them to train other people in their organizations.

Implementing a train the trainer process in your organization prepares your corporate trainers and maximizes learning.

Another big advantage is that it provides a powerful skill set and growth opportunity for supervisors and managers who will act as instructors in their respective roles.

4. Implement a continuous learning process for your employees.

This is the process of learning new skills and knowledge on an ongoing basis. In a world where the landscape of work is constantly shifting, we need to be adaptive.

Here are some benefits of continuous learning:

Career development for individuals: developing new skills increases competence on the job and additional training can help achieve career advancement goals.

Knowledge is power: the more employees know and can do, the more they can contribute to the organization.

Improve cost efficiencies: investing in the development of employees is less expensive than rehiring and retraining new employees.

5. Develop an internal communications plan.

Once you’ve built the training framework and you have buy-in from decision-makers, you’ll need to create RPA awareness internally.

A communication plan is necessary to keep your employees informed and involved in the changes introduced within the company due to the adoption of RPA or scaling using RPA. A strong communication plan ensures that employees are motivated to upskill themselves and are working towards a clearly defined goal that will benefit everyone in the organization.