First, the millennial and now the Gen Z, the newer generations at workplaces bring the most tech-savvy, adaptable, and globally aware workforce. Older generations also share a great deal with their younger counterparts as far as shaping careers, life lessons, feedbacks, and ethical leadership are concerned. But as the technology is changing and businesses are going through multiple short-lived digital transformations, employees are required to be able to thrive and innovate in unforeseeable workplace situations.
With 84 percent of organizations facing acute shortage of skilled workforce, workforce transformation has become a standing priority on organizations’ Learning and Development plans.
- Organisations are in a dire need to prepare a talent pool with competencies that are most important now and are going to be deciding in the coming decades.
- Interpersonal skills, learning agility, and adaptability are the few competencies that have taken over the two-decade-old list of mastery on niche technology, discipline, self-reliance, effective communication, and enterprising.
Talent development requires effective collaboration between the four stakeholders of talent pipeline development –
- The government
- Private enterprises
- Educational institutions
- Training institutions
As an existing talent pipeline helps recruiters identify any job opening and skill sets required in a probable candidate, each stakeholder needs to contribute efficiently. But more employers today are concerned that learning and development initiatives don’t reach to a wide portion of youths at workplaces
The Future Is Anything But Predictable And This Is What Businesses And Employees Are Competing With Right Now.
At times when academia is failing to equip learners with the skills required to succeed in this infinitely unpredictable and disruptive ecosystem, Learning and Development holds the key to the success of organisations.
As a result, L&D teams need to continually upgrade, radicalised and redesign the traditional approaches to learning and development.
Thankfully, the process of preparing workforces for tomorrow need not be as difficult as it seems. Most of the large enterprises are now capable of developing a new L&D solution in less than 90 days with a 30-day lesson development cycle to accommodate additional topics at the right time.
- IIHT works closely with Fortune500 enterprisesto develop high-quality skill development programs, platforms, and tools to transform students into billable professionals.
- In addition to enterprises, these tools and platforms are made affordable and accessible to individuals and institutions to pave ways for a sustainable talent pool.
While most L&D efforts revolve around teaching employees how to solve familiar problems using familiar methods, our efforts have been to let our learners be spontaneous, innovate, and bring in their creativity while practising new tools and respond to unaccustomed situations with more confidence
Challenges
Spotting And Reacting To New Trends
- Whenever an organisation adopts a new technology or faces an overwhelming business problem, the right way to prepare your workforce is to include the scenario as a project in their ongoing L&D curriculum.
- This help employees work collectively in teamsand come up with feasible solutions and recommendations while getting a hands-on experience of the technology.
- This also nurtures the traits like creativity and innovationwhich are highly desirable in the workforce of tomorrow.
Dealing With Disruption
- L&D practices should not be limited to avoiding risksrelated to talent transformations, rather L&D teams should take more risks (of course the calculated ones) to succeed in a disruptive ecosystem.
- It’s better to innovate and explore multiple assemblagesof newer learning strategies.
- Employees need to be versed more in risk-prone situations than keeping them risk-free.
- Making a small L&D mistake is way better than missing an opportunity that would have helped grow your employees’ learning agility.
Identifying Tomorrow’s Leaders
- The two most decisive differentiators of tomorrow’s workforce are problem-solving skills and the ability to drive outcomes. So, it’s necessary to ingrain such values in employees via L&D activities and transform them into dynamic decision makers.
- There must be activities that encourage learners to come up with inputs, use social collaboration toolsto secure information, contribute, and learn from peers in the community.
- Such employees hit the production floor with real-world archetypes and capable of taking a business decisionon their own.
Lifelong Learning
- Constant upskillingis the need of the hour and employees need to accept this as a measure of their employability.
- L&D teams should take the responsibility to inculcate a sense of continuous upskillingand make it a part of their employees’ learning behaviours.
- A constant inquisitiveness towards in-demand skills, available training opportunities, and trending technologieswill keep the organization and its workforce ready to greet the future long before it comes knocking.
Conclusion
L&D is known to offer experiential learning strategies and help in employees productivity from the word go. But the biggest challenges in Learning and Development is to be susceptible to changes and respond more flexibly and diligently to them.
So, help your employees prepare themselves to greet changes in learning effectively, and be more persuadable to challenging business circumstances in the future.
As a team, L&D needs to be bold, creative and introduce new perspectives to learning at work. You need to take some apt risks. The more you follow the mentioned practices, the more your employee learners will be equipped with tools they need to stay in harmony with changing technology and trends, stay on top of their skills, and stay ahead of the curve as well.