One in four employees in India lost their jobs between March-May alone and there is still a downward trend in the job market. Today, the one and only way to sustain the crisis is upskilling, says Deepshikha Kumar Anand
The pandemic has brought significant stress and has added pressure on both sides of the money divide. While almost all businesses have been hit with huge drops in demand for products, many are compelled to lay-off their employees. But, smart employers like Nokia, Adobe, Salesforce, and HubSpot realised this early that lay-offs are not a solution to protect the business from current challenges. That’s why instead of offering pink slips to employees, they preferred to empower them through upskilling and better learning opportunities. Indeed, the business goes up when people get upskilled.
One in four employees in India lost their jobs between March-May alone and there is still a downward trend in the job market. Today, the one and only way to sustain the crisis is upskilling, which is as essential to companies as it is for employees. For the former group, upskilling is mandatory to stay ahead of competition and for the latter group, it helps to get noticed in the workplace.
Upskilling is no longer an expensive and strenuous affair — thanks to the digitisation of communication that has made learning and upskilling immensely affordable for both companies and individuals. Availability of e-learning content in various formats and in different languages is greatly benefiting them while serving well-informed and sophisticated customers.
It is always difficult for an organisation to lose its valuable and essential people because their presence is imperative to achieve long-term goals and objectives. But, to keep them engaged and motivated, the employer must ensure their personal and professional growth.
For millennial entrepreneurs, digitalisation is a holistic and inclusive strategy for optimum utilisation of an organisation’s resources, including human resources. Therefore, the pandemic has led many futuristic organisations to receptively embrace digital learning solutions for the training and upskilling of their employees. Now, accessing industry leaders is no more a luxury for small businesses. Like corporates, they too can empower their employees with the experience and insights of eminent personalities and consultants.
With better digital infrastructure and high penetration of communication devices, businesses across the world are benefitting their employees with bespoke learning programmes and training modules. And, unlike exorbitant conventions and seminars involving hefty consultation fees of industry experts, venue expenses, and a large amount of logistics expenditures, e-learning is quite frugal and doesn't require breaking the bank expenses.
Localisation or language preference is another useful feature of these business-oriented learning programmes. The availability of curated content in multiple languages is a great support to learners who are not well-versed in the English language. Besides, e-learning training programmes are useful in developing both hard and soft skills among employees. Now, using e-learning training modules, employees in any region or time zone can access the tailored training programmes of the industry experts. And, unlike exorbitant conventions and seminars involving hefty consultation fees of industry experts, venue expenses, and a large amount of logistics, e-learning is quite frugal and doesn’t require breaking the bank expenses.
The writer is the Founder & CEO of SpeakIn
