If you are wondering when the time is to start upskilling your workforce, the answer is not today, not tomorrow, not even yesterday … You should have started at least three years ago!
For too long, organisations have resisted change and dismissed digital transformation as a hype. Now these same organisations are playing catch-up and lagging behind their more agile competitors in a digital evolving reality.
I have written in my earlier piece that 85 per cent of big data projects fail and sadly, the data remains trending in this direction. Harvard Business Review found that organisations calling themselves data-driven has actually dropped each year from 37.1 per cent in 2017 to 32.4 per cent in 2018 to 31.0 per cent in their latest study.
So how do we remedy this situation?
I have and will continue to preach that in order to future-proof and position your organisation’s sustainable long-term growth, digital transformation requires talent with digital skills.
Ten years ago, CEOs were struggling to find professionals with global experience. Today, organisations are desperately seeking digital-savvy leaders as well as a digitally agile workforce.
In fact, four out of five CEOs bemoaned their employees’ lack of essential skills and identified that as a threat to growth. LinkedIn Learning’s ‘2019 Workplace Learning Report’ has even christened 2019 as the year of the skills gap, with a 32 per cent increase year over year in identifying and assessing skills gap. Across industries, organisations need talented employees who know how to use new technologies in-line with business objectives, are acquainted with emerging digital business models to achieve business goals and can adapt to new and evolving approaches and methods that can contribute to business growth.
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Self-motivate
This isn’t only a leadership concern. Tech illiteracy is more likely to make the workforce redundant long before automation has the chance.
By 2030, as many as 375 million workers globally will have to master fresh skills as their current jobs evolve alongside the rise of automation and capable machines, estimates McKinsey Global Institute.
Employees are just as responsible to upskill themselves, either through organisational training or independent learning by proactively seeking out new skillsets and certifications.
They have to adopt an agile mindset that embraces change and uncertainty to create value in a hyper-connected, automated world.
They themselves by right are the best judges of what skills they have and what skills they need. In doing so, they can self-report their capabilities to their managers and together identify what gaps need to be filled along with which areas can be upskilled.
Reskilling might even be necessary to replace outdated skills with new skills to meet the changing job landscape as essential skills acquired only last around five years on average. Allowing the employee’s skillset to grow redundant is a disservice to them and what they can meaningfully contribute to the business.
Managers can track and measure the employee’s progress against set key metrics, advancing promotion opportunities in potential leadership roles and even match-make the employee to a role more suited to their capabilities and career direction.
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Don’t look for talent – build it
Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon, once said: “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
Just like Bezos used to do, I personally interview every single applicant when hiring to ensure the right person is tasked with moving my company forward. Otherwise, the company culture can be negatively disrupted and demoralize the team. This begs the question, why take the risk?
Not only is there already a scarcity of talent in the market but it takes time to familiarise them with the company culture, meet the company’s expectations, have them learn the workflow and processes from scratch and if they can’t perform, it is expensive to replace them.
The smarter investment is in upskilling your current workforce, which can lead to a more well-rounded, cross-trained workforce while increasing team effectiveness. More than half (54 per cent) of all employees will require significant reskilling and upskilling in just three years.
Providing support, development and career path-building keeps the workforce engaged, productive, innovative and competitive, reduces ‘brain drain’ and better prepared to handle challenges – all of which enhances the organization’s bottom line.
Organisations have to instill a culture of active learning with an engaged workforce now so that, whatever skills are needed down the road, companies are responsive and have all the processes in place to roll out a successful upskilling initiative.
Create a roadmap to define how much of the workforce needs to be upskilled and how. Strong communication plays a major factor as leaders would need to interact with their workforce to manage the change taking place.
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A strategic approach with a long-term outlook can result in a greater unity of purpose is not just the leadership team but the organisation as a whole. Knowledge and education will divide the winners and losers in Industry 4.0 as talent is the heart of every organisation.
The data-driven journey
To successfully invest in upskilling successfully, organisations would benefit greatly from first capitalising on skills planning. Skills planning is the keystone of any strong upskilling program, by clearly presenting where the organisation’s workforce is currently in comparison to where the workforce needs to go.
In other words, organisations can identify essential skills that are required as well as the development employees need to meet ideal proficiency.
Many leaders whom I have spoken with often have to resort to either poaching from other organisations or importing their talent from overseas, both of which are expensive and usually temporary solutions.
When all is said and done, it is about taking initiative and gathering up the courage to make that big leap into data-driven status.
Ensure the business is set for success by developing a digital mindset, skills and new ways of working for all employees across all levels.
It is incumbent on organisations to advance their workforce’s abilities in realising the value of cognitive technologies and thus transform their enterprises into efficient engines fueled by innovation.
Based on what we see above, the question of “where do I begin” is automatically answered. We should begin with Talent. Then the next question arises, “how should I do it”?
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The department leads of Human Capital, CEO and the Chief Strategist need to come together and strategise on the necessary steps to take when embarking on the data science journey.
First and foremost, identify which talents within the organisation can be upskilled quickly. Parallelly, educate the whole company on what is Big Data 101, Data Storytelling and Data Visualisation as this knowledge will be a strong foundation for the future.
Build a learning pathway of online classes, courses and other educational programs for all the organisation’s must-have skills. This should be the priority of one’s organisation for the next one to two years! If these are not in place as soon as possible, organisations will struggle to stay alive.
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