We are living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is driven by the rapid adoption of new technologies. Today’s fusion of the digital and physical worlds has created opportunities for new products and services, which has created new jobs and changed the way businesses operate.
Organizations that embrace technology and employ intelligent automation will be well-positioned to outpace their competitors. However, most workforces lack the skills needed to navigate this explosive change effectively. In fact, Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends survey found that 53% of CEOs and business leaders believe that over half their workforce will need to learn new skills and capabilities within the next three years.
As the digital transformation of the global economy continues, personalized workforce training programs that develop in-demand skills in real-time will become key to organizations’ success. In 2020 and beyond, expect enterprises to shift to a new way of thinking about workforce development.
Skills Mapping Charts the Workforce
With large-scale technology disruption anticipated for the foreseeable future, charting the skills required for roles as compared to the existing skills of an organization’s internal talent supply will be essential for workforce development and planning. Skills maps provide a visual representation to help Human Resources (HR) and Learning and Development (L&D) leaders identify current skill gaps and forecast emerging skillsets that will be needed in the future.
Evaluating employees’ skills is not an easy task, and is a common obstacle when implementing workforce training programs. Top organizations leverage innovative HR technology like eSkill’s workforce assessment platform to gather reliable data for skills maps. eSkill collects both qualitative and quantitative data. In other words, eSkill’s user-friendly dashboard shows HR and L&D professionals a breakdown of the skills needed for a role and the level of proficiency for each.
Personalized Learning Pathways
Today, L&D teams are reshaping the workforce development ecosystem by prioritizing tailored learning paths. By analyzing employees’ skills, businesses can determine those who are best suited to move into newly-created or significantly-altered roles. Such an analysis reveals the ideal learning pathway for each employee, including what skills the organization needs them to acquire and at what rate.
eSkill’s automated skill assessments make scaling customized training a reality. Personalized learning pathways equip employees with the most relevant information while reducing the time and money spent on workforce development. A key aspect of this type of training is to build on workers’ current knowledge while avoiding the “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Internal Skills-Based Marketplace
In 2020, organizations will shift to more agile and flexible workforce strategies focused on in-demand skills development instead of training for fixed roles to survive disruption.
Today’s business leaders are faced with many disruptive challenges as they continue to navigate the uncharted waters of a global pandemic. To outmaneuver uncertainty, organizations need to adopt business models that are agile and responsive to rapid shifts in talent needs.
As we enter this new, unpredictable era, leading HR and L&D professionals are applying the principles of the gig economy inside their organizations. An internal skills-based marketplace allows businesses to share talent across departments by dynamically matching and deploying workers based on skill sets. Rather than acquire new skills by hiring externally, competitive businesses can rapidly develop and better leverage their internal talent supply.
On-Demand Workforce Development
In 2020, HR and L&D professionals must radically transform workforce development practices to keep pace with business demands. To do so, employers must increasingly assess and map internal skills and future needs, create personalized training pathways, adopt agile models of talent deployment, and leverage on-demand training programs.
Workforce developers are keenly aware that while skills are valuable for immediate business efforts, they also provide the framework for data-driven workforce strategies in the mid- and long-term.
When the Internet emerged as a tool for training workers, organizations quickly turned to the autonomous approach of “eLearning” to cut costs associated with traditional in-person training. However, organizations have now realized that a content library of learning modules does little to enforce the retention of new skills.
Since digital media platforms like YouTube have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, workers’ patience has declined and the consumption of on-demand content has increased. In recent years, companies have begun utilizing innovative learning platforms that provide personalized user experiences to deliver the exact knowledge or skills training needed–a trend that is likely to continue.
Learning on-the-job enables employees to immediately apply new skills and knowledge to solve real challenges. As a result, employees do not waste a single minute on irrelevant training and do not see learning as a disruption. Instead, learning becomes a productivity tool. In fact, LinkedIn’s research shows that learning on-the-job increases employee productivity by 39%. Taking the time to measure your employees’ existing skills and knowledge with employment assessments is the key to reaping the benefits of on-demand workforce development programs.
Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s employment skills assessments to implement workforce training programs for existing employees and new hires.
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