The workforce is changing. It’s more digital, more global, diverse, automation-savvy, and social media-proficient. In the past, employees learned to gain skills for a career and stay in the career with what they know only taking trainings once in a while; now, the career itself is a journey of learning. To attract and retain the best talents today, providing continuous learning is critical. Since high performing organisations must hire and retain competent staff to remain that way, providing a system that fosters ongoing learning is very important.
According to the 2017 Delloite report on human capital trend, 90% of the executives they interviewed believe their company is facing disruptive change driven by digital technologies, and 70 percent say their organization does not have the skills to adapt.
This doubt reflects the fact that job skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. Software engineers must now redevelop skills every 12–18 months. Professionals in marketing, sales, manufacturing, law, accounting, and finance report similar demands. The Economist reported the Executive Chairman of Cisco, world leading software company as saying, “We compete against market transitions, not competitors. Product transitions used to take five to seven years; now they take one to two.” Product transition of course requires new skills. For today’s digital organizations, the new rules call for a learning and development organization that can deliver learning that is always on and always available over a range of mobile platforms. Especially as Millennials increase in the corporate world, a key to provoking their best is real time ongoing learning as indicated by a Glass door research.
Another issue is talent acquisition, as talent sourcing and recruitment face tremendous pressure. Talent and skill shortages are widespread. In a recent survey conducted by LinkedIn, 37% of employees in different organisations globally feel over qualified for their roles! At the same times business leaders explained that they cannot seem to find the right people to fufil job positions. This creates a problem in the organization and must be managed effectively if performance will not be jeopardized.
The interesting thing is the explosion of completely free or low cost training offering individuals and organisations ready access to continuous learning even on the go. There are today free online libraries like Booksc, innovators like Khan Academy, Udacity, edX and YouTube. Leading universities offer micro masters programs at a tiny fraction of the training cost full masters programs. Upon completion the individual can then apply for full masters program at any of the participating institutions.
The ongoing commoditization of content can be highly disruptive to corporate learning and development departments. So they are faced with a stark choice: harness this trend to their company’s benefit or risk watchingtheir performance stall behind as a result of staff not possessing the relevant skills. And more still watch key employees leave the organisation one after another.
Leading companies are embracing these opportunities to help their employees develop the competence they require to drive performance. For example, Genaral Electric launched “brilliant learning” to transform factories to use big data, Internet of Things, and newer manufacturing methods like 3D printing to increase productivity. GE’s Brilliant U is an online learning platform that features video sharing and offers employee-driven learning across the enterprise. In year one, more than 30 percent of GE employees developed content and shared it with their peers.8 That’s embracing disruption positively. One GE healthcare engineer designed a new tray to quickly fill vials of contrast medium using 3D printing technology. Aside from being quicker, this method also cost the company just $1000 as against the $20,000 injection moulded trays. Talk about optimizing performance by embracing disruption? This is it.
It is important to understand that disruption is supposed to help us optimize performance and not otherwise. We are not supposed to be worried about robots taking jobs meant for humans. We should rather be talking about allowing robots to do their jobs while we embrace technology to equip humans to do what they should do.
The challenge before executives therefore now is to become the catalysts for next-generation careers while also thinking about how to support the overall growth of the business. They should become part of the entire employee experience, delivering learning solutions that inspire people to reinvent themselves, develop deep skills, and contribute to the learning of others. The goal is a learning environment adapted to a world of increased employee mobility. Interdisciplinary skills development is critical because these capabilities align with the organizational shift to networks of teams. Learning should encourage, and even push, people to move across jobs.
Brian Reuben
Brian Reuben is a business advisor and keynote speaker. www.brian.com.ng @brianoreuben
