Talent development — specifically building up workforce skills — is vital to pandemic success for Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs). If we learn one thing from the pandemic, it should be that technology adoption has changed the world of work.
Sam Palazzolo, Principal Officer @ The Javelin Institute

COVID-19 is a massive health crisis! While different from the 2008 recession caused by financial markets, it has caused a near-overnight shift in how we get work done. Pandemic worries have meant companies have cut back or removed the need for nearly all workers to operate from the commercial workplace — office premises. As lockdowns ease and we have somewhat gotten used to this ‘new normal’ of working, the new work model too has gone from a temporary measure to a blueprint for the long term.

Technology and new work styles have been disruptors long until the present tragedy, however. Consider the following statistics:

Nearly 14 percent of the international workforce will need to get new abilities or change jobs by 2030, because of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) (McKinsey Global Institute, 2017)
Around 87 percent of executives now see or anticipate workforce skill gaps; under 50% knew how to Take Care of the issue (McKinsey Global, 2020)
Reskilling and upskilling will form a significant chunk of efforts to strengthen talent pipelines for your future, according to 82% of companies
About 74 percent of people expressed their readiness to pick up new skills or to be retrained fully, to maintain potential employability
Industry 4.0 is the key… or the culprit!

Industry 4.0

The fourth Industrial Revolution has influenced the abilities required and the tasks performed. The consequent displacement and lack of talent are bound to have a direct effect on dynamics of company and cohesiveness of society — automation has changed the labour market, and integration of technologies has led to altered business models and new types of jobs. The 2018 ‘Future of Jobs’ report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicted automation displacing 75 million jobs by 2022, combined with 133 million new jobs coming from economic and demographic changes.

Shortages of jobs and also of ability loom large… plus CHROs recognition that a concerted effort on reskilling and upskilling of the workforce is in order.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated that 1.37 million workers would be wholly displaced from the roles during the next ten years. And US businesses are moving large on tech adoption!

Productivity vs Technology

It might seem that simple, but it isn’t. Two variables excursion up the pursuit of complete productivity from embracing technology:

Skills gaps in local and global labour markets
Declines, frequently drastic, in many recognized job roles

Workers will need to adapt to the highly energetic job market, while companies need to figure out how to align them with brand new job roles. This goes past automation, AI, or remote work — it is all about reskilling and upskilling employees as per evolving business models. The WEF has predicted that the need for an typical 101 days of reskilling and upskilling per worker up to 2022, with every skill with a shelf life of just five decades, and soft skills being earmarked as abilities of the future evidenced by AI, automation, and digitalization.

What’s needed is for CHROs to adopt a talent approach preparing employees — and employers — for present and future disruptions, focusing on:

Cognitive and digital competencies
Emotional and social abilities
Ability to adapt to change and deal with challenges
Employees need this!

CHROs know that skill-building isn’t a quick dash to the finish line; it’s in fact comparable to a marathon. Immediate business needs can be addressed by rapid training initiatives, but a much more well-thought-out strategy will go a long way toward building the future capacity pipeline. Even the brief term would have companies incurring reskilling costs in addition to full wages even with lost productivity, but then they save costs of severance and hiring and also may exploit the improved productivity of the reskilled employees particularly when compared to the low productivity of new hires.

The Key to Talent Development: Upskilling & Reskilling

So as a CHRO, just how can you go about upskilling and reskilling employees? Here are some tips:

The company should identify groups of workers and other initiatives crucial to driving future price, and accordingly project requirements for individuals and skills.
The program must be drawn up with inputs from stakeholders across business departments, and it must leverage AI and other tech tools for planning in addition to deploying employees so. It also has to be tailored to the demands of the specific industry and function.
Talent management should be a part of these development, as the reskilled employees ought to be assessed at par with fresh applicants who might be considered for evolved job roles. The learning intervention must obviously be assessed by the workers and scored as per their satisfaction with and devotion to such programs.
Don’t pare your training budgets! Such actions may seem to save costs but are in reality only delaying the inevitable, as when there’s a rebound (and there will be one!) , a massive skill shift — bigger than previous crises — will probably soon be in order. It can help to be ready for future demands by constructing an efficient and resilient learning system now.

SUMMARY

Every crisis has seen an effect on the work force, and CHROs and their companies have had to immediately shore up capacities. Technological shifts were already underway in the realm of work, and COVID-19 has merely accelerated these. A broad agenda of reskilling and upskilling must look to enhance digital capacities as well as abilities in adaptation, cognition, and emotion.