Readying For The Future

Facilitating the upskilling of existing employees is more cost-effective than investing in new hires.

- Vinod Viswanathan

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is in the reckoning. Automation, one of its key components, has picked up pace across sectors, even as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and virtual reality (VR) transform the manner in which job roles and functions are carried out on a day-to-day basis.

As technology undergoes rapid transformation, the demand for new-age skill sets is steadily on the rise. In contrast, the number of adequately-skilled workers has not proliferated at an equivalent rate.

An easy way for companies to overcome the talent gap is to hire freshers from colleges who are expected to possess these skills. However, hiring new employees may not be as cost-effective. Furthermore, assessing the new employees’ skills, potential, and areas of improvement can be daunting and risk-laden.

A few organisations have also tried the conventional method of training exceptionally good fresh talent/campus hires. After administering diagnostic assessments to evaluate learnability, the cohort is made to attend training modules and assessed post training before they are ready to be deployed. However, there is a catch that organisations have increasingly started realising, even in this approach.

The cost of a new hire is not just financial but also involves other resources, especially time. Corporates can deploy human capital more effectively, thereby being cost-efficient, by upskilling their existing employees and bridging the skills gap. The other imminent benefit of upskilling is that it ensures that a good employee is retained, while eliminating the need for inducting and aligning the views of the organisation with that of the newly hired employee.

Why should you upskill your employees?