Future Workforce Dilemma - Reskilling or Upskilling or Rightskilling?

On a lazy Friday afternoon, during my recent visit to one of the India’s largest private sector banks branch offices in southeastern suburbs of Bangalore for opening my kid’s saving account, I happened to encounter a precarious situation. I had all my original documents along with my daughter’s ID card required for opening a saving cum Gov of India scheme account. The bank officer had to take a photocopy of the same documents and unfortunately the printer cum photocopy machine toner got exhausted and the entire photocopy and print requirement of that branch went haywire for the sole reason that none of the so called skilled new age bankers (at least a dozen employees) were unable to replace the ink toner. I assume almost all the employees present were new age graduates and some B-School graduates who comes with basic office management skills like operating a PC, Printer, Photo Copier etc. The officer asked me to get it on Monday or wait until the toner is replaced by an expert (here a blue collared employ probably the guard) who was out for some 30 mins break for his afternoon sojourn. I wanted to get my work done on the same day and agreed to get photocopy on my own from a nearby outlet (almost 400 m away from the bank).

I was invited as a panel member for evaluating final semester projects of students of a prominent B-School based out of Mumbai. I was appalled at the inferior quality of majority of projects and the reason for the apathy was the Covid pandemic and the learning curve for major student population deteriorated coupled with an opportunity loss to immerse in the real-life business scenarios. These outgoing students would be Industry Aware (thanks to digital revolution) but unfortunately not Industry Ready. With the pace at which new age technology like AI, Meta Verse, IoT, Blockchain, Web3, Automation etc are adopted by businesses across the globe, the present and next generation of students need to be not only Tech Savvy/Aware but also Tech Ready and Tech Capable and a connoisseur and practitioner of the same in their upcoming corporate journey.

As per World Economic Forum estimates, 65%?of children entering primary school now will be working in jobs that do not currently exist. Academia, Industry and Govt has a mammoth task to plan meticulously to meet the demands for future workforce.

The world is changing at the speed with which one’s finger browses the social media apps on your smartphone. Ditto in the case of workforce ecosystem as the world is changing faster ever post the Covid 19 pandemic and corporates are struggling to stay ahead of the curve. Keeping “people” as the centre of organizational strategy is imperative for organizations to thrive and excel in the changing workforce ecosystem. Remote & hybrid work, gig economy, robotics, automation, and AI are reshaping the way we work.

Individuals value system is changing, people are more concerned about mental and spiritual well being and give less importance to materialistic aspects. As a result, monetary benefits and societal standing due to profession has taken a backstage and has impacted the way we work resulting in the “The Great Resignation” thereby by creating a stiff competition for talent scouting and retention folks.

Remedies to tackle future workforce challenges:

Close skill gaps: Digital skills coupled with analytical and critical thinking and interpersonal and leadership skills are valued more than ever. Assess the current employee skillsets to identify skill gaps and include this in learning & development (L&D) program to upskill the employees over and above their primary skillsets to thrive in the unseen future.

Create an AI workforce: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an integral component of digital transformation strategy and organizations on their transformation journey must take cognizance of AI’s impact on workforce. Automation of processes and AI have freed up human tasks and hours which has enabled humans to focus on more “creative” and “human” aspect of work/job in hand. Humans and AI robots would need to co-exist, collaborate, and marry to augment intelligence at work and define a new workforce with improved productivity, efficiency, creativity, and innovative work environment. By 2025, as per world economic forum, at least 12 Mn more jobs would be created than it destroys.

Industry-Academia partnership: The fundamental framework on which industry-academia partnership thrives is the consumer-producer interaction channel, where the industry expects a refined, industry ready workforce (output) from academia who would bring value on to the table from the 1st day of corporate christening. The sorry state is the degree of communication between the 2 parties, which unfortunately is at a minimal level. There is no structured way of industry-academia interaction/communication where in if addressed properly would give rise to sharing of new research outputs and data to industry and industry in turn compensating by communicating the actual corporate requirement and close collaboration with academia and not just mere educational and infra funds and Fellow chairs through trusts and CSR. Inputs from corporate fraternity would help academia to improvise on pedagogy for the Gen Z who are more interested in in-person work/project experience and academia in turn can collaborate with industry to chart out continuing education programs for corporate executives on areas of interest for industry.

Agility in Operating model: In this highly dynamic digital world, enterprises need to become more agile w.r.t people, process, systems & technology. Appreciating the changing workforce needs like hybrid work environment and gig and side hustle economy giving rise to a more fluid workforce challenging the traditional workforce is a daunting challenge for the new age CHRO. An agile organistaion is well prepared for workforce disruptions marred by technology, pandemic, and market trends.

As John Maeda says, “Simplicity is subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful”, I would have liked my bank officer to have the “right skill” to carry on with her daily job which may necessitate fixing the toner of the printer rather than me walking half a kilometer to get a photocopy of the required document.

Before “reskilling” and “upskilling”, time to ponder over “rightskilling” …

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Author: Dr Rajesh Devasia, Data Analytics & AI Consulting, India

Disclaimer:?The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belongs solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer (past or present), organization, committee, institutions, or another group or individual.

Author can be reached at:?[email protected] ?Mob: +91 9819903380