The 3-year itch: why up-skilling has to happen every 3 years with the onus of skilling on the employee
In the last few years, there has been an exponential growth in computing power, portability, mobility, intelligence, and emergence of new mediums through a virtual and augmented reality. The so called Fourth Industrial Revolution has been transforming business and economies at a rapid pace, as the traditional technology and related business models are fast becoming extinct. The primary driving forces have been the benefits of technology in bringing efficiency and a scalable role of business technology allowing companies to outsource business function to efficient and more productive business environments.
“Up to 65% of the future jobs don’t even exist yet and up to 45% of the activities people are paid for will be automated using technology.” This is a threatening statement.
There has been a significant change in the workplace with technological innovations and progressive improvement at a ‘weekly’ rapid pace and the trend is guaranteed to continue. Existing and prospective employees and students in colleges and universities need to be ‘technology ready’ for jobs in any field, as the technology developments are rapidly being adopted by emerging businesses. An artificial intelligent managed print service (MPS) can take control of replications, reduce costs, and more effectively manage devices and processes. New computing and robotics technologies threaten many safe havens of professions, whether hand-skilled or knowledge-skilled workers, industrial labour, data analysts, legal experts, accountants, taxi drivers and so on. The stable work force at large MNCs have been under attack from unicorns aggressively pursuing the best and brightest minds. For example, Google’s mapping experts taken up by Uber to strengthen their own map research. This highly competitive tech hiring market has created two scenarios. First, when the unicorns fail to live up to their valuations, what will happen if you work at one of these companies? Second, when companies struggle to retain talent, their focus has shifted to training and re-skilling to match client requirements.
Within this context, the breadth of required skills has changed drastically. Innovation is fast streamlining the work processes across departments. Innovation also increases mobility and contributes to lean architecture of the organisations along with Internet of Things(IoT) and BYoD transforming the flexible working cultures. This approach is now central to our aggressive exploration in how to align those aspirations with delivery of new-age education. With the unicorns scouting for Tech talent, the onus of skilling has shifted to the employee. If you really need to re-think your present role other instead of the new assigned one, here is the BIG SHIFT – as an individual you will need to fund your own skill development (because nobody else will) and keep this re-skill cycle running
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Dr. Suneel Sharma (Director-Virtual Reality Program)
Dr. Suneel Sharma is a tech entrepreneurial spirit and educationist, after gaining a rich professional experience of over 20 years in multinationals and Indian top universities. Known for his visionary thinking, strategic insights and execution capabilities, Dr. Suneel earned many awards and recognition. He was nominated for Board of Directors (OAUG) at Oracle. He is educated in Engineering, Humanities, Science, Education, and Business Administration from BITS-Pilani, IIM-Bangalore, Stanford University and Lancaster University. He obtained Glider’s Pilot License and medals in swimming during his college days
