Companies are facing sizeable skill gaps in all departments at all levels and they can't seem to fill up the gaps by hiring new people. The candidates lack the digital and soft skills required to succeed in today's working environment. Rapid technological changes like automation and artificial intelligence, helping people keeping up with the change are challenging. There is also the issue of retention of top talent.
Hence, companies can no longer afford to wait for the traditional system to supply them with the required skilled manpower, given that the need is too urgent and too acute. Therefore it becomes necessary to look at how the college-age students, as well as adult learners, can be educated to suit the present-day requirements.
Let us first understand the current scenario.
Education is in the midst of digital transformation. Online learning models have emerged as a potentially disruptive technology that's redefining the way we learn. No longer do students have to assemble at a central location to enjoy the interactive, real-time experience with teachers and fellow students. They can instead participate from any location any time at an affordable and convenient fashion. This trend is rapidly emerging in post-secondary education. many students taking these courses are working adults taking the course as part of their accredited higher education experience.
This has led to the creation of many online learning platforms, the more well known among them being EdX, Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning(Lynda.com). These platforms help companies reskill the workforce in many areas including cutting-edge and specialized fields. Many of these platforms allow companies to work with colleges and universities and offer online learning as a benefit. Some major universities are customizing the courses and offer them as focussed modules on these online platforms and frequently partner directly with companies to offer education to their employees.
This pace of learning is frenetic and uneven. There is no single universal system for online learning that is likely to emerge as the players offer innovative solutions many times customized to the companies requirements. What these varieties of options have done is to make education far more affordable and convenient. This allows companies to make a more significant investment in their greatest asset - their employees. Amazon has committed to invest 700 million over the next 6 years to provide postsecondary job training to about 1/3rd of its employees. At present Amazon is outsourcing this training to colleges and universities but in the future, it will be well-positioned to provide this training without the middlemen. Other companies have promised to invest but to date, very few of these promises have materialized into action.
An interdependent solution to training:
In many ways, Amazon's announcement underlines the fact that companies need better-trained talent to compete in this hyper-competitive environment. This also reiterates the theory of interdependence (Clayton Christensen) where the product and service providers must integrate across all elements of the value chain. The links between companies and universities that supplied the required talent are no longer adequate in the current knowledge economy.
Today the value addition by the universities is not enough for the companies employing the talent. The subject matter that employees need to know is changing rapidly and building curricula would be too cumbersome. This would result in companies taking a more active role in the education and training of its workforce. For Amazon, this could mean training its workforce with the latest technologies, skill sets dictated by the work and at the same time they could open up it's offering to others as they did for Amazon Web services.
Focus on ROI;
For companies to invest in learning solutions sustainably there should be a clear and compelling understanding of ROI. There could be different reasons for investing: upskilling, re-skilling, out-skilling, education, on-ramp programs. Some may be more sustainable than others. eg: on-ramp programs improve the quality and diversity of pf candidates in hard to fill roles by offering short term courses to create a direct pipeline for employers. Outskilling helps employees build a skill set to change careers. these offerings make the companies more desirable and enhance their reputations in the job market.
Measurement challenge:
The biggest challenge for companies is to figure out what kinds of pf people they need before they sustainably invest in human capital. Few companies have a clear understanding of the underlying skills, competencies, and habits of their successful employees.
The book "How learning works" describes the stages that individuals go through - individuals gain expertise in a particular role or field, they go through stages, from novices who don’t know what they don’t know to novices who do know what they don’t know to experts who know what they know to experts who don’t know what they know.
Asking top performers to write a job description is not as simple as they aren't able to easily articulate what skills are essential as much o their knowledge has become automated. Cognitive task analysis, where you observe and document the underlying activity, is relatively costly and time-consuming and so very few companies do it.
This presents a great business opportunity. A new set of service providers are offering new ways to measure employee skills, offering a range of skill measurements to certify domain expertise. It may also help people upskill, track self-reported skills, and their connections to various jobs. This could translate into a better measurement of ROI on human capital. This could also lead to employers take better advantage of the emerging disruptive tools dedicated to helping people learn sustainably.
Education disrupted-
Michael B Horn - MITSMR 27jan2020
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