Re-skilling of Employees Mandatory to Address Future Challenges: IAMAI Study

India is presently experiencing the effect of technological transformations like digitisation and automation in the employment sector. As a consequence, recruitment needs, and patterns have been changing over the last few years, finds a report titled ‘Corporate Training in India: Perspective from Industry Professional’. The report is published jointly by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Ascension Centre for Research and Analytics.

The report finds that a new work order is to be expected sooner which would be different from the traditional one. Automation has already been introduced in various sectors, especially in manufacturing where Robots have been introduced in production and assembling process to a large extent. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is changing the business models completely. Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence have become critical requirements. Employees have also started preferring Gigs instead of regular employment, although in a small scale till now. These developments have led to a scenario where re-skilling is a very important requirement for the workforce.

This study is based on in-depth discussions with industry HR professionals of the rank SVPs, VPs, HR Heads, who are facing this talent management challenges on a regular basis.

To obtain a holistic picture, the report covers different sectors such as BFSI, IT & ITES, Consulting firms, Retail, Automobile, and Pharma. Discussions with industry professionals were conducted on certain key issues as mentioned below.

Ø Whether the skill gap is a genuine challenge towards growth

Ø Procedures followed to assess and identify skill gaps, steps taken to address those and how ROI is measured, if at all.

Ø Role of corporate training in new age business to mitigate skill gaps

Studies suggest that “almost 40 to 50% of existing jobs which are transaction heavy would get automated. The key sectors which would see the changes more prominently are IT, BFSI, manufacturing, transportation, packaging, shipping, etc. and if the early trends are to be believed that is what is evident. Roles of data entry clerk, cashier, financial analyst, telemarketer, customer service executive, manual work operator or executive, factory worker, computer support specialist, retail salesperson are constantly getting disrupted.”

The report identified that both soft skills and technical skills were important in the business. However, emphasis might vary depending upon the nature of business. Certain technical skills would be important across any sector such as analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and similar ones.

The report suggests two key points that would play an important role in the future, especially from the re-skilling point of view. The first was reskilling or skill enhancement would be mandatory for corporate to cope up needs of the future. The second point was technology would play a critical role in corporate training.

The report aims to understand industry experts’ perceptions towards current skill requirements and how they intended to utilise corporate training for skill gap mitigation. The focus is to assess its efficacy in re-skilling or skill up-gradation of existing employees in the relevance of emerging Edutech Sector in India.