Contemporarily, digital skill development has emerged out as a key business priority in the IT sector, including the IT enabled services. This is specifically due to the fact that the IT sector would be witnessing a huge demand-supply gap in the upcoming days.
Dr. Deshpande, Senior Vice President & Chief Human Resource Officer, NTT- Netmagic believes, “My vote would be for investing our time and efforts in learning and development. At NTT Netmagic increased our focus and efforts multi-fold for skilling and re-skilling. We are strongly pushing for increased adoption of online learning tools like Udemy & Degreed, along with in-house training programs like First Time Managers and Train the Trainers. We are also nominating our employees for online courses offered by reputed Business schools for masterclass and development courses.
We have multiple learning platforms available for our employees in management and leadership roles like classroom trainings, online live sessions, webinars, online self-learning methods like Udemy, Degreed etc.
- The content list is exhaustive with more than 3500+ topics and courses available to the employees to choose.
- While learning is the prime objective hence employees are given the option to make choice of the course they wish to learn, it is always recommended them to select the one which is more relevant to their skills sets and line of work.
The biggest benefit of these learning platforms is that the curriculum/content is contextualized most of the times. Moreover, basis the need and requests, the programs with the designed curriculum/content are researched, gathered through management institutes such as IIM, ISB, XLRI, Tier 1 B-Schools, training institutes, etc.”
Over the days, the IT-ITes sector in India has adopted a multi-pronged approach. As per a report by Nasscom, organisations have found it much conductive to use a mix of ‘build’ and ‘buy’, for fulfilling their talent needs. Dr. Deshpande continues, “Because of digitisation and advancements in technology, our learning approached, preferences, choices and hence habits and attitudes have undergone a sea change. Social media has had its own positive and negative impact on our attention spans and learning behaviour.
The COVID lockdown has forced us to realign, reassess, and redesign our overall HR strategy and more so learning and development practices. Because of increased focus on online learning and our push, we have seen an increase by 300% in uptake of on line courses and certifications. This has certainly added to their knowledge base and expertise besides earning them certifications. Moreover, this has contributed in a big way in strengthening our learning culture. Also, this has had positive impact on customer satisfaction and our overall deliverables. We now have more informed and aware workforce, who have experienced the joy and thrill of on line learning. Now it’s easy to bring them to training sessions.
The best take away has been they are now naturally & voluntarily more inclined to learn new things, apply on the job and implement. This had vastly improved the engagement levels within the organisation. Now, it’s much more easier to bring focus groups together, discuss and develop a roadmap to meet project goals.”
Talking to Express Computer, NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh once said, “Employees working from home must strengthen the innovation quotient across industry verticals and create new market opportunities. They must grasp every chance to upgrade their skills to remain industry-relevant and future-ready. With this aim, we have also initiated reskilling programs courseware on Artificial Intelligence, which would be under the NASSCOM FutureSkills initiative and will allow individuals to upskill themselves over the next few weeks. we would encourage all to use this opportunity of working from home to upskill themselves in the skills of the future.”
Now, how do people go about it? As per Dr. Deshpande, skills to manage change, early adopting skills, ability to influence, building consensus, decision making and skills to lead in crisis would emerge out as great options.