Upskilling workforce for AI/ML era must for organizations to survive, scale

As corporations begin to prepare for a post-pandemic era that is much more digitized, the pandemic has sparked increasing interest in the use of emerging technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“AI Will Create 2.3 Million Jobs While Eliminating 1.8 million”   

“The strongest demand for talent with AI skills has not come from the IT department, but rather, from other business units in the organization”

The above two Gartner quotations clearly emphasize that AI will not take away jobs but push the workforce to upskill and stay in the race. Also, the findings highlight the fact that AI/ML jobs are not restricted to software development but encompass a whole lot of other business units of an organization. 

Importantly, Covid-19 also has a significant role to play in the urgency sensed to upskill the workforce of the current era. The Covid-19 pandemic will go down in history as a ‘Black Swan’ event that transformed the way business functions. The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns across the world disrupted businesses across industries and in every sector. While large and mid-size corporations had the financial and workforce to drive these changes, start-ups and small businesses faced several challenges due to their limited resources and budgets, particularly due to the cost-cutting measures they were forced to employ. After months of turbulence, industries are witnessing revival and it is imperative that organizations, large or small, invest in the skill development of their current and future employees to establish a flexible and efficient staff that can execute various jobs. 

The importance of reskilling and upskilling

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) report, “54% of employees need reskilling and upskilling by 2022 to stay competent in the job market. Learning and development professionals today acknowledge that neglecting the exponentially growing skill gaps in an organization will not only have a detrimental impact on future growth, innovation, customer engagement, and experience but will also hamper the delivery of outstanding product service and quality. Therefore, organizations are opting to upskill and reskill their personnel in digital technologies while they continue to function with the current staff. 

Many companies are collaborating with global certification providers like Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, EC-Council to reskill and upskill their employees in the above-mentioned technologies.  A recent report cites that 62% of the hiring managers are seeking candidates who are upskilled in AI/ML. There has been a 27% rise in the demand for ML professionals as these can change the nature of the workforce in the coming future. 

Various AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning certifications like Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900), Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution (AI-102) can provide valuable insights on Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals and enable them to design and implement Microsoft Azure AI Solutions. Upskilling in cognitive skills like Complex Skills, Decision-Making Skills, and Continuous Learning Skills also help in building a strong competent Workforce of the AI/ML era.

Interestingly best opportunity for the employees to upskill and reskill at the workplace comes by participating in the open-source contests offered on platforms like Google’s Kaggle. Employees can hone their skills expected for AI/ML era workplaces by taking time off from routine work and by participating in such learn-with-fun contests.    

The upskilling process can be envisioned in 3 broad steps: 

1. Assessing an Organization's Current Status and Its Future State, which includes understanding the business strategy and expectations from AI, conduct Skill or Learning-Needs Assessment, develop future-state AI vision and the related talent strategy, and last but not the least preparing a training roadmap. 

2. Invest in a Learning Process to Upskill and Reskill the workforce. 

3. Ensure the Learning is Sustained amongst the Learners

Data Engineering, Automation, and the Internet of Things are all driven by the rapid strides taken in AI/ML disciplines. The reskilling and upskilling of the workforce have become inevitable as many job roles will be obsolete and newer roles get created. The onslaught of the pandemic has further fuelled the growth of automation where AI/ML disciplines have a definite and decisive role in the automation of all the spheres. 

AI/ML transforms existing enterprises by leveraging machine data which helps them gain insights to strengthen their operations. The insights from analytics are used to identify areas of improvement and improve the flow of operations. Upskilling the workforce in AI/ML will help businesses to reduce problems and accelerate the speed of operations. Informative insights derived from ML help in monitoring end-to-end infrastructure and empower businesses. While the introduction of AI simulates human intelligence bringing more accuracy and transparency and reduces time and effort. Upskilling people in AI/ML will further eliminate the chances of processes and systems being prone to errors due to negligence in human interference and therefore leverage the Digital transformation of an organization.

To become a high-performing company and become analytically smooth, the workforce needs to be upskilled in AI/ML as soon as possible. Earning industry-relevant certifications will prove decisive in your career growth. 

 The article is authored by Bhavesh Goswami, Founder & CEO, CloudThat