Investing in mentorship and upskilling employees is the key to building a high-performing team

PwC found that CEOs want to improve the skills of their employees but only one fifth have started this journey.Experts told Insider that today's workers need to be "lifelong learners" as well as digital citizens.This was part the Insider virtual event "CEOs: How Talent Drives Transformative Change", which ProEdge presented on Tuesday.Click here to view a video of the entire event.Subscribe to the Business Insider Newsletter - A daily selection of our top stories, curated just for your convenience. Loading something is currently loading. Click Sign up to receive marketing emails and other offers from Insider.It is evident that there are business reasons to actively coach, mentor, and upskill all employees in an organization.Annette Richardson, founding partner and managing partner at consulting firm Richardson Partners LLC said that "The cost to inaction around upskilling or often reskilling" is increasing during Insider's virtual event "CEOs: How Talent Drives Transformative Change", presented by ProEdge on June 29. "We realized with COVID-19 how we could potentially lose a decade's human gains."She added, "It is important to leave no one behind."Chris Weller, senior editor for strategy at Insider moderated the panel titled "Mentorship & upskilling: Two keys to a high performing workforce." Richardson was featured along with Sunet Dua (chief product officer at PwC).According to the recent survey, 77% of PwC employees wished they had new skills and 60% were worried about digital automation.Dua stated that CEOs are very concerned about the "key skills of their employees" but one in five CEOs in our survey indicated that they have not done anything about it. He said, "We're trying help companies work through how."Dua stated that employees must perform at their best in a new hybrid workforce.He said, "Your employees must become what we call lifelong learners." He said that once they have achieved this, they will be able to become digital citizens. This is where we can then interact with automations and robots on a daily basis.Dua stated that PwC currently has more than 270,000 people being trained and that there are approximately eight to ten digital disruptive technologies around the world which will create these new skills.He said, "Let's dispel that myth. It's not difficult to start." "You don’t have to start with everyone. Start now.