Upskilling

According to a recently published World Economic Forum Report, 54% of all employees will require a serious skill upgrade within three years. According to other studies, one in three jobs will either disappear or change shape drastically in the next decade. This rate is one in two jobs in the blue collar!

It is a known fact that the skills acquired at school become obsolete over time. In order to keep themselves updated, it is more important than ever for people to learn to learn and to keep the habit of constant learning alive. As the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society took decades, making skills fit for jobs was not a big problem. But now the transformation is very fast and there is a serious skill mismatch occurring around the world.

Millions of jobs remain unfilled with competent people in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems. On the other hand, millions of people with the skills of yesterday, not today, work in companies. Responding to a question about adapting to changing skills needs for future jobs, 70% of CEOs stated that employees could not even master the skills required for today's jobs. 55% of CEOs also say that employees' lack of skills causes the company to be ineffective in innovation.

“Upskilling” is the name given to the job of upgrading employees' skills to cover this gap. Upskilling is about giving people the training and the opportunity and tools to learn in the face of constantly evolving technologies and to develop themselves regarding the social and cognitive skills required and to use them in the workplace and in their daily lives. It's not just a one-time move. 

In a rapidly changing world with digitalization, automation, artificial intelligence, IoT, and robotic applications, where will the workforce needed come from? There is no option for companies to replace all their employees and hire new ones. First of all, such a pool of ready talent is not available in sufficient numbers in the world. Even if there was such a manpower at present, it would be very difficult to have people who have both technological and fine social skills and also know the business and culture of the company. For this reason, companies first have to take the lead here and raise their employees' skills to meet the requirements of today and tomorrow to preserve their own viability.

Technological skills alone are not enough. Fine skills include innovative skills and creativity, complex problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, communication and collaboration, empathy, persuasiveness. On the company front, Learning and Development is heading towards an increasingly important agenda item. It can even be said that learning is among the top three among Talent Management subjects. If you have noticed, we call it "learning" not training only. Because training can be inefficient if learning is not brought to the fore.