First Chapter FromThe eBook 'MULTISKILLING FOR ENHANCING EMPLOYABILITY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP' by CKB Nair

CHAPTER 1 MULTISKILLING

“There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.”

― George Crane

Learning any one specialized skill was essential to become a professional. This was the essence of the theory of division of labour. If the acquired primary skill is suiting to the aptitude of the individual, with hard work, it will be possible to become a world-class professional. This is applicable in health care, engineering, education, manufacturing, and all other professional fields. 

 Many skilled professionals supporting the airline industry in international operations became jobless in April 2020. Forced suspension of manufacturing and business services, hospitality services, education and training resulted in damaging effects. Many projects were on hold. The pay was withheld.  The world lost more than 400 million full-time professions in the wake of pandemic COVID 19. Paid workers and self-employed suffered from job disruptions in the form of reduced working hours and earnings. Further prospects for employment are severely challenged. Experts predict that this crisis may continue for years to come.  Such situations are frequently happening in  scientific and artistic world.  At a faster speed. Now any professional can become redundant at any moment. Obsolescence of the skill is near death for professionals. Urgent effective measures are required to mitigate this impact by creating resilient opportunities. Especially for youngsters.

 Many professionals may not be successful in the initial stages of their professional life. This failure and disappointment will result in extreme stress and pressure. This can lead to poor self-esteem, low perceptions of self-concept and feeling of worthlessness. Such failures are expected and it should be accepted to ensure emotional and cognitive growth. Failures can increase the resilience and will support to prepare better to cope with the pressures of the competitive professional field. Failure can be a source of opportunity to search for new avenues for learning. Failures help to develop essential life skills as coping, resilience, creative thinking and teamwork. Approach failures in a constructive manner and owe up to any mistakes committed. Failures help to learn to deal with problems independently to manage emotions, to solve problems, to make compromises, to understand the importance of respecting other people’s viewpoints. Ability to master the art of failures reinforces the concept that the process or the journey is more important than the result or the destination. Learn something new is the immediate option. 

 Multiskilling is the process of acquiring more than one skill. So, it is a survival mantra. With multiskilling, professionals learn one or more skills outside of their primary skill. In the fast-paced life in this world, all creatures were always struggling to survive with their limited skills to gather essential livelihood means.  The primary reason of many to learn additional skills was to become the fittest for survival. A multiskilled person has a set of competencies that allow working on areas and in sectors other than that person’s expertise.  With multiskilling, professionals learn to go beyond their immediate role and become flexible and responsive to business needs. Persons with skills to work on different projects can increase productivity and reduce the need to have additional professionals.

Present status

Multiskilling helps professionals to have more job opportunity, collaboration and flexibility with increased job security. Multiskilling helps entrepreneurs to have a deeper understanding of the system of entrepreneurship to improve the quality of their service. This will bring in economic gains and more job satisfaction as a long-term benefit. The present issue is not whether to introduce multiskilling, as it is a globally desired need for various improvements in human resources. So, the issue is how fast more professionals can be trained in multiskilling activities. For this various aspects are to be considered.

Perfection is possible with super specialisation. This will be a casualty with multiskilling. This can be controlled by  frequent motivation and appropriate timely feedback for improvement. During unpredictable eventualities due to sickness or accidents, multiskilled personnel can be very helpful. Multiskilling ignites innovation in various fronts with the curiosity of an amateur. Successful case study reports are available to justify the reasons for introducing multiskilling. Many years ago, multi-skilling started in the assembly shops of the automotive industry. There was a need to keep the assembly line going so mechanical fitters were trained in high-frequency low-risk electrical tasks so that the fitter did not need to wait for an electrician to isolate and disconnect the motor before the fitter changed the gearbox(1).

Civil engineering sector has mechanical fitters with electrical and instrumentation skills to reduce the requirement of specialists. Now multiskilling is common for professionals in the hospitality sector, health care, IT call centres, manufacturing shops, retail selling points and for software development. Technological solutions have helped to supplement the complicated and complex to meet all the challenges.  Professionals get opportunity within the organisation in various verticals to bring about positive relations within the team. 

Types of Multiskilling

Vertical Multiskilling: To impart managerial and supervisory skills. This helps to enhance the responsibility in addition to the core process. This can be marketing, accounting and financing functions. 

Horizontal multiskilling: To impart skills from another trade or branch of functions. This helps professionals to operate complex machines or carry out assembly and testing of various services.

Depth Multiskilling: For carrying out innovative research and development activities more complex skills are acquired.  In-depth multiskilling, a set of complex skills are acquired within the same job function to offer a better overall service to the customer (2).

Benefits of multiskilling

Human resources are becoming more and more scarce. Reduction in the workforce is possible by reducing the amount of time a professional need to be available to process a function.  When services are required in intermittent pattern with gaps in between it is possible for one professional to attend other services to have the flexibility and better collaboration at the workplace. Multiskilling helps to have more motivation and development of staff members. As the professionals are integrated with the organisation with multiskilling, staff retention is improved. Teamwork is encouraged as various professionals are interacting during the multiskilling training. When multiskilling is well planned and very purposeful, all the stakeholders take more interest to the specific outcomes. This empowers the professionals with safety and satisfaction. The productivity improves as the super-specialists cannot deliberately have control and limitation on productivity.  Operations shall not be held up due to reasons beyond control like absenteeism due to self-sickness of the super-specialists. After multiskilling training certificates are given for the additional skills to increase the prestige and power. Multiskilling is a piece of evidence to attract investors confidence in the limited companies. Professionals can have personal development and increased security with better career prospects. Entrepreneurs can have efficient staff hours with minimum disruption with flexible and optimal utilisation of human resources. After multiskilling of professionals, there can be better organisational coordination for projects and reduction in services through outsourcing. This results in overall reduction in labour costs. The inequality in salary among super-specialist and other skilled professions were very high.  Parity of salary amongst professionals can be rationalised with multiskilling.

The main disadvantage of multiskilling is the myth that the jack of all trades cannot be master of any one trade. Primary skill is to be considered for advanced training and additional skills are to be considered as complementary. As the knowledge base increases, professionals have to practice more of the primary skill to maintain the competency at a higher level.  The speed of service of multiskilled professional will be lower than the super-specialist.  The professionals may prioritise some services based on their whims resulting in undue delay in the neglected sectors. Training is costly. But not training is costlier.  Training cost and training related disruptions are expected. This is to be managed with proper budgeting. There is the risk that some professionals may not be able to carry out the tasks immediately after the multiskilling training. Some jobs may become redundant resulting loss of jobs for some professionals.   

How to plan skill development

 All the details of the professionals are to be updated periodically to have readymade input to organise multiskilling training programs. This is possible with a thorough audit in a specified format. Generic data and personnel details to be collected separately. Identify the right persons in the wrong roles. Plan the courses with long term goals and short-term goals separately. 

Professionals have the objective of getting maximum wages. Entrepreneurs and employers have the motive to maximize their profits. Multiskilling of the team members can provide an optimal solution especially, where there is more uncertainty due to seasonal businesses and market complexities. Multi-skilled professionals have additional capabilities enabling them to work on areas other than their own expertise. With this strength, professionals learn to become flexible and respond to ever-changing needs of the business. Multiskilling enhances efficiency, competitiveness, quality and other competencies. This will affect productivity in strategic terms. 

 Challenging Complacency

The conventional route of learning one skill and additional skilling for super specialisation in that skill was perfectly all right for most of the employees and employers. This complacency to have lifetime dedication in one skill was the main attribute for a world-class professional.  There is societal approval of this complacency to lead the contended life with the initial profession with which the journey was started. Or with which our ancestors had a livelihood. It was fearful to have a midway change in the profession.   Very strong and compelling reasons are required to challenge this complacency. Willingness to challenge complacency can come after considering the future courses of actions. There may be numerous conditions to belief the status quo is the best option. The main worry to embark on a new skill is the doubt about acquiring competency in the new skill. After the initial impulsive passion, there will be doubt about the maintenance of momentum in the enthusiasm in the long run.  Risks and the fear of unknown will compel to strengthen the complacency attitude.  There will be no support to challenge the complacency from the inner circle of specialists in the skill domain. So, availing support from an external agency, having thorough knowledge about the feasibility of the new skill to align with the existing skills, without much disruption can be an amicable situation. Acquiring a new skill need not be to show dislike to the core initially acquired skill. Most of the cases there will be the possibility to align the new skill with the current skill without causing much disruption. If the new skill is not better than the existing skillset, then it is not the appropriate time to go for multiskilling. 

 Futurist requirements

Super specialised professionals are becoming endangered species during technological revolutions. Multi-skilled professional is not vulnerable by incompetence when a new technology is introduced.  They can make a change in the process of working as they have been continuously in habit of learning new skills.  Multiskilling increases  morale in the performance environment resulting in improvements. They can adapt quickly and perform beyond their skill specifications.  This helps to evolve the business environment effectively at short notice.  Competition from unknown corners increases the risk. Multiskilled professionals are assets for organisations facing survival threats. Adaptability and versatility to perform under pressure are key qualities for enhancing employability.  The distinctive feature of multiskilling is the interest of the professional to continue learning pursuits.  This can be traced from the expressions of learning habits of the professional during narrations of experience and past achievements.  Multiskilling in horizontal levels is important for strengthening the bottom of the pyramid and multiskilling in vertical levels are required for handling leadership roles.   Multiskilled professionals are versatile looking for new dimensions in their business environment avoiding monotony. They will be able to identify new opportunities within the organisation compelling to retain them. In the turbulent future, the present skill set may not be adequate. 

Organisations had prepared to meet the challenges of globalisation in the last part of the twentieth century. Economically developing countries had increased their proportion of world GDP. Meanwhile, more developed countries had lost percentage share of GDP. This has necessitated protectionism in all the developed countries. This will be a barrier for looking for specialised professional for specific operations.  Then the best alternative is to train available specialists for additional skills. This requirement is expected to increase in the twenty-first century. 

 Organisations can train professionals into a multiskilled workforce. So, at the

entry- level proper assessment has to be made about the present calibre of the candidate and for the capabilities for continuing learning pursuits. Some of the skills with futuristic demand for all professionals are: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cybersecurity and ethical hacking, Fintech navigator programs, Data Science, and big data analytics.

How to do Multiskilling

The present world is of constant change and disruption. This can be a problem super specialists. But this can be a limitless opportunity to participate, inspire and nurture the imagination for those who are willing to continue learning. In a globally networked world, information is getting at cheaper rate and faster speed (3). What can be done with this information is the new challenge. Leaders involve in this thinking and give directions to others to execute.

Planned training is not keeping pace with the demands of the workplace. On one hand, the shelf life of skills set is getting shorter. Skills may get obsolete fast (4). On the other hand, new careers are spawning which was not on the horizon a couple of years back (5). The main issue in this context is what is the way out for professionals to remain relevant to workplace demands of the present as well as to prepare for the future.

The world is growing more complex and uncertain. The opportunities for people with critical thinking, innovation and imagination are on the rise. Organizations are only as good as the people they employ (6). To stay relevant and grow in this challenging business environment, a learning mindset has to developed, where continuous lifelong learning becomes a daily habit. This is possible by becoming agile, adaptable and resilient (7). Freshers and experts must develop the learner’s mindset to scan the business environment for opportunities, to regularly carry out the skills gap analysis and to use all the tools available to continuously reinvent to prepare to be future-ready.

The methodology of multiskilling from the professional’s perspective is explained in this book.  More than the ability to learn, a regular learning habit is essential for continuing learning pursuits. This is explained in the chapter ‘didactic assignments’. These are to be developed into a regular habit. This habit will help to enhance employability and to improve entrepreneurial capabilities and personal development. The technological advancements and the globally collaborative attitude of professionals are enablers available exclusively in twenty-first century to accelerate the spread of multiskilling culture amongst the bottom of the pyramid. Continuing the learning pursuits was very difficult in the past. It is very easy in twenty-first century for people of all age levels. This is covered in ‘eLearning’ chapter. Selecting a role model is the second assignment as explained in the ‘Role Model’ Chapter. The third assignment is about updating the latest scientific developments as per the “Scientific temper” chapter. The fourth assignment is to  prepare a permanent learning room at the homes as given in the ‘Bravee Room’ chapter. The fifth assignment is explained in the chapter “coaching and mentoring”. This is an entrepreneurial task. Other portions of the book are to explain opportunities about various skills which shall be helpful for professionals in various fields to supplement their primary skills.

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Skill Management

So far, the discussion was on individual multiskilling methodologies. To reduce the burden of fresh recruitment and large labour turnover, multiskilling can be the holistic skilling strategy for organisations to ensure continuous success of the business, especially during the difficult times. A detailed consultation is required with all stakeholders to map out a combination of structure, process, strategy, and technology to succeed at skills management. All are expecting for the ‘next big thing’ which will make the present practices redundant and obsolete. This cycle will be replaced by another ‘next big thing’ a few years later. Talent management is the art and science of being successful during the ‘next big thing’. Some important steps in skill acquisition process are given below:

1. Evaluating the current workforce and the business needs

           Skill management specialists must have in-depth knowledge of the business they serve and the workforce requirements of this business. For example, how it is segmented and which segment has the highest demand. They must remain in touch with thess professionals and their expanding needs to fulfil talent requirements as and when they arise.   For this, they must identify the key metrics and parameters they need to assess. Skills gap and culture fit are examples for this. Then, they can use analytics to identify where the skills gap lies. The solution can be by workforce optimisation by hiring externally or training internally.  IT specialists and line managers can provide this data. Further this can be built upon using AI-powered predictive analytics tools to simplify the process.

2. Engaging in recruitment marketing to build an organisational brand

           These days when all information is transparent, it is important to have a positive organisational brand.  The skills acquisition strategy can use the data from the workforce evaluation to design a well-thought-out recruitment marketing plan to create a memorable organisational brand. This will be  considered with generational differences and catering to the needs of each generation. The millennials place importance on career development, so that shall be the Unique Selling Point (USP) of the organisational branding strategy. The professionals prefer to be part of a sustainable organization. Use the USPs of the organization to attract professionals with the skill to continue learning pursuits.

3. Preparing a talent pipeline for strategic and leadership positions

Nurturing relationships with active and passive professionals is essential to build a skilled team. Skill acquisition specialists must forecast the needs of the organization and use succession planning to determine which skill gaps can be filled internally by multiskilling and which gaps need external hiring. Building a relationship with such professionals requires time and an active professional relationship management strategy (8).

When to Engage in Skill Acquisition

Recruitment is a reactive process. Organisations recruit in reaction to an existing vacancy. Skill acquisition, on the other hand, is proactive. Organisations motivate existing professionals to have additional skills to take up the predicted future needs of the organisation. This policy is more important for organisations in the following cases: 

a) When starting a new business

For hiring for the new business will involve hiring for new positions, new skills and new technologies. Therefore, select multiskilled professionals when an organization starts a new business segment. 

b) While hiring exclusively for skills, but not a specific role in the organization

A multiskilled group of professionals can help more when hiring for the organization. This will be helpful when it may not be possible to know exactly which role a certain candidate may have to fill. To have a set of skills that can be matched with a role that may arise in the future is one highly valuable approach about it. The skill acquisition specialist must focus on experience and certifications to fulfil the immediate requirement of the business and assess the potential for skills development on the job. After the skills gap analysis, it is possible to know which skills are additionally needed. Prepare a strategy to help professionals to have additional skills in those areas and close those gaps.

c) To increase diversity hiring efforts

Recruitment cannot meet skill diversity targets. This requires a well-planned strategy to encourage diverse professionals to skill themselves in various skills across the organization.

Recruitment and skill acquisition are not separate from each other. A skill acquisition strategy considers recruitment technologies in place to enable multiskilling development. 

 Skill Acquisition specialists need to collaborate efficiently with experts of artificial intelligence and other technologies. Artificial Intelligence tools are expected to become the mainstay of all aspects of the HR function. This is essential as the talent and technology landscape both evolve and greater efforts are needed to devise unique skill acquisition. In these unprecedented times, there is an imminent need for change management. The decision-makers in every niche are forced to make organizational changes fast (9). There are several approaches to prepare, support and assist various teams in making the shift to remote working and virtual training. One of the best ways to help the employees to make a smooth transition is to create engaging online training programs. They can be led through quickly and effectively by adding gamification elements to online training courses.   An LMS solution with gamification capabilities can do this.

Skill management is an organizational effort. It does not just rest with the small skill acquisition team in the human resources function. The skill acquisition specialists will collaborate with the in-house marketing team to improve the organisation’s branding efforts. The shall collaborate with the IT team to gather data about past hiring and training strategies and the skills of employees who have done well in certain jobs. This data can be used to define and identify the skills required  to build the organisational strategy accordingly.

Seven Survival Skills

Tony Wagner in his book “The Global Achievement Gap” has identified to learn the following seven survival skills (10, 11):

1. Critical thinking and problem solving: The essential component of this is asking good questions. The education system is about getting the right answer. People in their lives and in work need to deal with vast amounts of information and a key skill it to figure out what's important and what's not, what's accurate and what's not. These are key parts of being a critical thinker. In academic institutions, critical thinking has long been a buzz phrase. Educators pay lip service to its importance but few can tell what is meant by the phrase or how to teach or test it (13). Indeed, there is the need for critical thinking in many government curricula and it is a key theme in the Competencies framework. The education system massively emphasises critical thinking skills. But there are no tests for this skill. So, it is being underemphasised by teachers. The learners need years of practice developing their thinking skills in order to apply it to university study, work and life effectively. Schools need to start teaching critical thinking as soon as children are capable of abstract thinking, so that it is not just a secondary school thing. Schools need not to emphasis heavily on textbooks, which are not encouraging critical thinking, problem-solving or questioning.

2.Collaboration across networks and leading by influence:  In the old world of school, students are accustomed to having teachers tell them what to do. And students rarely worked in teams. In the new world of work, people work in teams (often virtual teams that work together through video conferencing and email) and have to make their own decisions. Corporations are increasingly being organized around a very different kind of authority and accountability structure - one that is less hierarchical and more reciprocal and relational. This skill is not taught in the academic institutions.

3. Agility and adaptability: Our system of schooling promotes the idea that there are right answers and that learners get rewarded if they get the right answer.  But in the real world of work and life, the right answers are not there and things change. So, people need to adapt and be able to deal with disruption. Most children are naturally agile and adaptable. They quickly take to new physical skills like walking and riding bikes. Thrust a new piece of technology in their hands and they will immediately explore and play with it. The children have adapted readily to the Internet revolution. Move home and most children will soon fit into the new neighbourhood. They have to deal with changing schools and every year they get a bunch of new teachers. Schools seem hell-bent on destroying this life skill.

4. Initiative and entrepreneurship: The world need proactive people, self-starters. This is Stephen R Covey's second habit of highly successful people. It involves creativity and creating our own answers and solutions. And schools do little to encourage this and much to destroy it.

5.Effective oral and written communication:   Business oral and written transactions should be clear and concise that has "focus, energy and passion." But in academic institutions, English teachers spend a great deal of time focussing on grammar, punctuation and spelling and formulaic styles of writing. These capabilities are tested for grammatical correctness and for awarding the degrees.   Academic institutions are not emphasising on oral and written communications with focus, energy and passion.

6.Accessing and analysing information: People have to deal with an astronomical amount of information in their lives and work. It needs to be found and evaluated. It is very important to have the ability to use information from a variety of sources: web pages, magazines, podcasts, TV, face to face interviews and discussions, surveys, books. The ability to synthesize information is a very important skill for the twenty-first century.

7.Curiosity and Imagination:  It is natural for children to have curiosity and power of imagination.  But academic institutions do not encourage it and most of the time aim to destroy this quality usually through a diet of teaching that bores and demotivates them.

The ISO 9001:2015, ISO 45001:2018, and ISO 14001:2015 standards, together with ISO 50001:2018, have special relevance for organizations around the world. These standards bring together the good management practices required by manufacturing, business, and service institutions to meet the requirements of interested parties, prevent risks and have a strategic approach towards the integral generation of value, energy efficiency, safty and sustainable success. For this reason, institutions must promote and guarantee energy efficiency and cost-effective management internally and with their stakeholders. Both energy resources and their efficient management are increasingly weighted in the ethical field, in the rational balance among expenses. Organisations are being deconstructed to become more efficient, agile and fluid. In such organisations, multiskilled workers shall be more satisfied with their promotion prospects than their single-skilled colleagues. Multi-skilling is a talent that can prove to be very beneficial and effective in the workplace (14). This skill is valuable for both the employee and the employer, especially in today’s fast-paced technology-driven businesses.

Division of labour was in the ancient Indian civilisation thousands of years ago, which resulted in deterioration of dignity of labour to some professions. Despite this disadvantage, similar theory became popular in the west after it was reintroduced by economists and technologists from the end of the nineteenth century. Narrow specialisation provided the opportunity for researchers to automate those functions and to replace the related human labour. There were professionals who made it great through single skilled efforts and subsequently became arrogant about their super specialisation.

 “An arrogant person considers himself as perfect. This is the main harm of arrogance as it interferes with his main task in life, to become a better person” (Leo Tolstoy)

References

1.    https://www.mdfm.co.uk/benefits-of-multi-skilling/

2.    https://www.servicefutures.com/does-multiksilling-in-service-management-lead-to-improved-job-satisfaction

3.    https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-vuca-learner/9789352807512-item.html

4   https://www.shoppersstop.com/crossword-the-vuca-learner-future-proof-your-relevance/p-204774978

5  https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Strategic_Networks_Learning_to_Compete?id =5epwHcyQqGUC&hl=lt

6   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40715492-the-vuca-learner

 7  https://www.sagepub.com/hi/nam/the-vuca-learner/book265718

8   .https://www.toolbox.com/hr/recruitment-onboarding/articles/talent-acquisition-vs-recruitment/

9  https://monkeyviral.com/top-gamification-lms-software-list-for-your-needs/

10  https://zk.notarypak.ru/44

11  https://wiki.bath.ac.uk/display/charlescornelius/Tony+Wagner%27s+Seven+Survival+Skills

12 https://wiki.bath.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action

13   https://blog.softchalk.com/infusing-metacognition-in-teaching-learning

14   https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/future-multi-skilling-teams-lara-dos-santos