Talent Transformation is an inside job

Authored by: Krupa NS , CHRO, Xoriant

The world of work is changing faster than ever. First COVID compelled businesses to digitalize employees’ jobs, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) and GenAI stands to transform these positions.

What this translates into is a shrinking shelf life of skills. As some jobs cease to exist and new ones emerge, workforce training, preparing for the role including deskilling, reskilling, and upskilling at scale becomes the number one solution to be skill-ready and future-proofed for the VUCA world.

According to the latest report from Statista, “In 2023, ChatGPT was?the leading technology skill globally ,?according to topic consumption on Udemy Business, experiencing a massive growth of over 4,400% globally.” But focusing on one skill and one learner cohort is never the best-fit solution.

Whether you narrow down into India’s journey towards becoming a global economic powerhouse hinged on the untapped potential of its skilled workforce, or you zoom out to the world’s workforce skill-gap, the answer is in the details.

Investing in talent transformation isn't just a priority for businesses; it's essential to nurture and develop their most valuable asset – their workforce.

Can I AI?

In 2023, we (Xoriant) identified AI capability building as one of the key skill pillars for our engineering workforce. With Engineering accounting to approximately 87% of our total workforce, this was a massive undertaking from the get-go.

12 months hence, we have invested in GenAI through various learning and development programs and initiatives, crowdsourced internal event like Ideathon. This has realized into our engineering teams not just with an understanding of AI but capable of leveraging GenAI tools to streamline various stages of the software development life cycle (SDLC) in service of the customer objectives.

Moreover, to maximize engineering efficiency, we developed our AI-powered SDLC solution ORIAN Pulse that accelerates development times and significantly reduces costs through automation at the speed of AI. Our early findings show potential project savings of 25-30% using ORIAN Pulse.

Diversity in leadership – how training and coaching can help?

Despite the gradual increase in the percentage of women with a seat at the table, this gender continues to be underrepresented in leadership roles globally.

Addressing diversity in leadership needs a multi-pronged approach. Hence, another area of focus for us at Xoriant has been Leadership Coaching with a special emphasis on building women leaders, aligned to our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) goals.

We are taking action. To foster a healthy workspace and environment conducive for women, Xoriant has undertaken initiatives like SHEroes - a special community platform for empowering women, tapping into their true potential. An exclusive leadership program called XCELERATE that groom women to be stronger and nurture them to be leaders of tomorrow.

Enabling leadership development at all levels for all genders and designing targeted mentorship and coaching programs for women is just the beginning. A step in the direction where we intend to increase women representation that is beyond par with some of our peers and leaders who have set examples over and above the industry benchmarks.

The great training divide

“Where you stand on workplace learning and development (L&D) depends on where you sit”. This hot take from a?new survey conducted by Censuswide ?with support from CYPHER Learning, uncovers the lesser spoken aspect of workplace Learning and Development: the discrepancy in perspectives from the leadership lens vs the employees’, particularly entry- or even mid-level professionals.

Organizations that are highly focused have C-suites working on the talent transformation agenda not just by controlling the budgetary strings, signing off on L&D programs from a distance but having a hand in the game.

Really doing the inside job

Transforming talent is often easier said than done. As a People Practices leader and a life-long learner, I can tell you that it’s about co-creating a learning culture with your L&D organization that encourages open participation from all. It’s about rolling up your sleeves, rallying your teams to the common goal, and walking the talk in a way that impacts everyone across roles and responsibilities.

The article is originally published on Xoriant.