Learn or get left behind!
We hear it all the time now; the current changing nature of work seems to make no one exempt from the possibility of job loss. After over a quarter of a century unemployment rates are high and climbing, we’re in a recession bubble. Industries are pivoting faster than we could have ever imagined; but this comes at a cost to those employees who lack the skills to continue working at these unrecognised organisations.
Unfortunately re-skilling programs have now fallen victim to slow growth where some employees are made redundant, put on furlough, let go, only to be replaced secretly with the right skilled person who is given a short fixed term contact – employed as a permanent employee for a short term. Unless the business leaders make up-skilling and re-skilling part of their day-to-day responsibilities for their current and pending workforce, people who lack digital knowledge in certain lower socioeconomic communities will suffer the most.
Due to border closures, the obvious sectors like tourism and travel have contracted, where other sectors like healthcare, fitness, insurance and education have experienced growth. Taking into account education, this sector has had to shift to more prudent ways of moving more classes online.
In a recent article, IBM New Zealand managing director, Mike Smith ‘Covid’s tech boom: IBM offering free courses to get diversity into tech industry’ recently stated that IBM would step up and provide free digital courses to those in the community who lacked digital skills. This shows that Tech companies who provide training services as part of their overall product and service portfolio, are stepping up to the plate.
The volatility in job markets caused by COVID-19 is making leaders look at the need to proactively create future-fit workforces whose skills evolve in line with areas in demand. Rather than taking the easy way out and reducing loyal staff, leaders need to think about how to implement re-skilling into their cultures, systems, and processes to ensure that skills keep up with changing requirements.
The ability to learn should be encouraged where leaders themselves need to know how to learn and change rapidly and embed this ability in their organisational cultures, systems and processes. Without skilled leadership, how else will organisations quickly understand and meet emerging problems.
As we continue to go through unprecedented times, with demands on organisations fluctuating quickly, we prove that learning is especially important in garnering creative solutions to business problems and allowing organisations to adapt to uncertain market conditions, more rapidly.
Today, consumers are adopting new ways of consuming media and have adapted thanks to COVID-19. So in these uncertain times, it is imperative for IT trainers to shift their approach to meet these changing needs of individuals wanting to upskill fast.
With innovative digital and cloud-based platform offerings we’ve seen a shift in trends these past few years where the IT learning landscape has included collaborative peer-to-peer learning and intuitive training simulations, subscription models and varying digital platforms, guided virtual live sessions and module based training content.
Nobody would have imagined that a pandemic would allow for faster adjustment to the changes in learning conditions and digital media consumption.
As these new trends evolve rapidly there is a sense that this way of instituting IT Learning or as a matter any online training, will become a possible permanent fixture. And it is unlikely to return to the exact same experience we once came to expect in the traditional physical classroom practice. We may never return to the same level of traditional classroom experience, but the human element of learning remains absolutely critical.
Travel, hotel and day-long or multi-day training sessions are no longer being seen as effective learning format for everyone. Just like selecting a show on Netflix, today’s learner can choose the relevant training program to stream directly to their televisions and complete it at a time and speed that works for them.
Thanks to evolving online modular training where breaking up training into smaller study blocks, organisations who had previously spent thousands of dollars on sending employees on multi-day training events either locally or out of state, are now seeing the cost benefits which allows for a more flexible and focused employee training experience that fits better into everyday work, especially amid changes like working remotely.
Technology is disrupting every industry and area of life, and work is no exception. For the immediate and post-COVID-19 future where people are losing jobs or up-skilling for a new job, the need for knowledge and re-skilling will persist increasingly in virtual and digital formats.
Learning has to be quickly and effectively delivered so that employees can consume it in a way that truly creates value to employers and society. Training providers are therefore quickly becoming aware that innovation will add value and as they need to continuously rethink how to assist learners to learn best and optimise each learner’s experience.
The main implications of this digital training revolution is that in demand skills today will shift with human expertise and may not even exist in three-years. Three or four-year courses offered through tertiary institutions may become redundant, unless you’re studying to be a doctor or lawyer etc., perhaps these formats will change to, in the future. Do you want to be that parent that spends 50k a year on a three or four year degree only to find out later that it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.
As businesses continue to accelerate their digital transformations and the demand for and consumption of effective digital learning experience skyrocket, our learning will evolve as challenges of the pandemic further reshape the way we learn. Training providers will need to evolve and elevate their portfolio to allow trainees with the flexibility to learn at their own pace, from anywhere, to achieve success and increase satisfaction through anytime-learning.
As the future of work and digital learning evolves, enabling anytime-learning will remain the core value of training providers to help organisations stay ahead of their competition and keep pace with product and technology advances.
These unprecedented times have not just changed the skills that are needed to thrive, they have changed the responsibility of business leaders to ensure these skills are adapted and developed. Skill building must fit within the rhythms of daily life and meet the clear preference for a flexible and personalised blend of online and face-to-face learning that is delivered where it is most needed, so that the workforce is best prepared for their future success.
