Intelligent Industry Requires a Culture of Workplace Skilling
Technological progress allows machines to perform many of the tasks that people once needed. In the coming years, this new revolution in automation will have a significant impact on jobs. Almost every job will change, many quite profoundly, and the vast majority of employees today will have to develop new skills. Preparing for the future is one of the most important business issues of our time. Still, most companies are not ready to address them.
The pandemic COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to the automatic revolution. Companies emerge from the crisis into a physical distance from their jobs and a world of significant change in customer behavior. Recovery forces organizations to rethink the following normal operations.
Manufacturing companies are redesigning their production lines and supply chains. Service companies adapt to focus on digital first-customer trips and contactless operations. The Indian project management institute PMI provides a wide range of PMP training courses to make suitable candidates available for plenty of visionary companies.
These changes will significantly impact employee skills and skill requirements, from the substantial increase in work at home and remote settings to a need for workshop staff to master new equipment and newly urgently needed health and safety standards. In early 2020, McKinsey & Company reported that 87 percent of businesses face skill gaps or anticipated gaps in the next five years.
Two types of changes across the workforce are needed for the future of work: upgrading, where staff has new skills to assist them in their current roles, and reskilling, where personnel needs the ability to take on different roles.
The studies show that the reskilling challenge will be acute in manufacturing, transport, and retail industries and operationally aligned occupations such as maintenance, processing claims, and pick-ups of warehouse orders.
Those fields and careers will undergo more significant changes than the global average. They often employ many employees and are particularly suited to automation or digitization because of many operational tasks’ predictive and repetitive nature of the culture of workplace skilling.
Industries moving towards Industry 4.0
Thinking of Industry 4.0 or the “Smart Factory,” think of a few things right away – IIoT, robots, and 3D printing. Unfortunately, the workers in this emerging industrial environment are not given sufficient attention unless there are concerns about potential job losses.
But experts agree that the ongoing transformation will lead to net job creation rather than loss. They also recognize the need for different skills, and overall, employees must be qualified. The key to helping the workforce achieve these skills is to provide access to information and develop a continuous learning culture.
The increase in automation and connected systems also indicates the transformation of the workforce. Not only do manufacturers have to attract technologically skillful talent, but they also need to restore or increase existing resources to use the power of new disruptive fabrication technologies. A state-of-the-art environment involves increased employee contributions to roles of technology, digital, and intelligence.
It also means that new employees can improve their ability to be multi-skilled and accelerate boarding. It involves frequent training and up-to-date learning and development efforts that address existing workforce pain and learning difficulties.
Culture of Workplace Skilling: How do industries address the skill gap?
Companies can use various ways of addressing skill gaps. You can look outside of the company and employ new staff who are competent. They can build capabilities internally and retrain their existing staff to prepare employees for new roles. Or they can adopt a hybrid approach, including using a skilled employee to meet short-term needs while internally developing the necessary skills.
Most organizations may adopt this mix of models. You can look to the external market to fulfill specific highly technical roles such as data scientists while seeking to meet new frontline roles from your existing workforces, such as robot controllers and managers for production exceptions.
Two-thirds of respondents believe that corporations must lead the way in developing the new skills required for the digital era, and 80 percent believe that the current workforce should reskill at least half of the latest roles.
The increasing degree of business digitization changes the speed at which organizations and employees work in digital ecosystems. People with repeated manual tasks are replaced by automation, robotics, and the need for new skills in tasks that lead other individuals.
Organizations will use technologies requiring more complex skills in resolving problems, creativity, and cognitive flexibility. For instance, field technicians will have new features, such as work instructions for augmented reality and data input through voice commands.
The growth of digital skills in employees is an essential element in developing a culture for the future factory. Compared to the skills needed to implement a digital company strategy, it is necessary to start with existing capabilities.
To achieve their large-scale reskilling aspirations, most organizations will have to considerably increase their staff training and capacity-building efforts. It has already begun with several large organizations.
For example, global retailer Walmart is investing $4 billion over four years to aid employees in transitioning to new customer service roles in frontline and back-office jobs. The Amazon E-Commerce giant has pledged $700 million to help its employees move to higher-quality jobs by 2025 for technology training. ManpowerGroup is a company with professional services that have entered into a partnership with Pearson and others over the next five years for upgrading 130,000 employees.
Constant upskilling and digital skills are more important than tenure and experience
By 2028, the highest quality work in nature will be cognitive. Employees will need to be creative, critical, and constantly digital to solve complex issues. Digital skills demand has increased by 60% in recent years.
The demand for new ideas, new information, and business models in today’s digital economy will continue to grow, combine and shift to new ventures and businesses. To meet these needs, employees have to refresh their digital skills consistently.
In today’s digital age, role definitions have become more fluid and dynamically changed. The primary planning entity, the currency of the strategic workforce planning, becomes increasingly skilled rather than static. Similarly, in line with new requirements and opportunities, continuous skills development and culture of workplace skilling has become a vital element of career development.
