5 minute read
On building impactful, futuristic workforce skilling strategies
Organisations need to understand the latest trends impacting the job market, says a r ramesh, director for managed services & professional, Adecco India – they need that knowledge to train the workforce in the multitude of skills required today by Mamta sharma
When we talk about a skilled workforce today, we no longer think in terms of a single skill; rather, business requirements today have morphed into a complex skillset with at least two main skills and one or more secondary or auxiliary skills. Some jobs may even expect employees to have hands-on knowledge or experience with more than five skills!
And this is just hard skills: on top of these requirements, soft skills are also becoming increasingly important and even mandatory.
Given the needs of the day, it is critical that organisations have some structured way to train their workforce in a multitude of skills and ensure that people get hands on experience working on different types of projects.
A R Ramesh, director or managed services & professional, Adecco India says that the first step should be for employees and job seekers to learn the technology and get certified. Then, they need to get hands on experience by picking the right projects – those which give them the opportunity to exercise those skills.
“If the candidate does not have certifications, then they do not even get through the screening stage. In the initial selection process, the ability to prove past experience or knowledge is essential. It is not difficult to get certifications. From a career training or academy perspective, there are many institutions and companies that offer training programmes. There are also many centres which specialise in training fresh graduates and making them ready
across a multitude of skills. These institutions work with other workforce solution companies to place the trained graduates with their customers,” he adds.
In an interaction with People Matters, Ramesh shares insights on how organisations can build impactful, futuristic skilling strategies, and the importance of technology and measurement tools in creating impactful skilling programmes.
Critical power skills that must top an organisation's skilling agenda
Firstly, it is important for organisations to understand the latest trends impacting the job market.
Over the last few years, the world has moved away from the traditional way of executing projects – the waterfall/V-process models – to a more agile led DevOps methodology. With this, the expectation is to have a team of seven to nine members who will be able to provide a workable product that is deployable every 8–12 weeks. This means that proficiency across technologies is a must.
This is even more relevant in an environment where the prevailing demand is for plug and play using containers and micro services. Such demand means there are quite a few standard offerings, but the need for customisation and integration requires technological know-how across a multitude of skills. So organisations need to start thinking of skill families rather than independent skills – for example, Oracle SOA with web logic along with database skills, Unix and shell scripting.
Other such families include Oracle Agile PLM with UX design using Figma, analytical thinking and tool knowhow, SharePoint or other collaboration techniques with a manufacturing background, Sitecore Developer with Dotnet development background, or NodeJs with JavaScript and RestJs.
To put together this kind of broad-based knowledge, organisations need to build a skill family suite, and angle their talent training efforts across the skills required for each family.
Today, classroom training is passe. Training increasingly involves self-learning, online, and self-paced with certifications to assess the level of competence. To create and deliver these types of training, and to assess the outcomes accurately, technology and tools play a very important role.
AI also allows learning to be customised to an individual’s learning style and capacity, making it more effective and targeted to individuals.
The metaverse can play a huge role in making training feel closer to the classroom experience, with simulations to make the environment more realistic. Also, it can feel instructor-led, especially if a digital twin is used for the tutor and the trainee, making it more interactive and engaging.
Benefits of metaverse upskilling
The metaverse is expected to be the future and with technological advances, it can practically be used across all scenarios. Given this I see an immense benefit in getting people upskilled on the metaverse.
It is not just about using the metaverse. The future also centres on creating citizen developers with the help of low code/no code platforms. Organisations must keep an eye on all these latest developments and ensure their strategy can maximise the benefits for themselves and their customers or employees.
Challenges to implementing a skilling strategy
Organisations place considerable importance on skills that remain relevant beyond the first bandwagon – else the efforts and money invested into skilling talent go down the drain. Hence, they need to predict the demand patterns and keep abreast of business needs based on strong forecasting techniques.
Also, the changes in technology are so rapid that new technologies and tools emerge every quarter, and so being agile is key. To address this, moving to skill families is a must.
Another challenge is that employers are very focused on experience, and tend to be apprehensive about taking in people who are just trained. This is why certifications, shadowing other projects, doing model projects or contributing through crowdsourcing and other broadbased approaches may be a good idea to build one's portfolio and demonstrate that experience.
