Five Ways to Re-skill IT for Successful Digital Transformation

Skill shortages hit businesses hard. Emerging technology offers a world of possibilities. But very few businesses have the workforce competent to take advantage of it. Skill transfers and training has not kept pace with tech advancement. Talent has become a source of competitive advantage.

The technical and functional skills gained at school or college become obsolete in 4.5 years now, as opposed to 24 years in the early ’90s.

The IDC 2018 State of Digital Transformation Report lists the five most popular new technologies among enterprises as mobility (59%,) Big Data analytics (58%,) private cloud (53%,) public cloud (45%,) and embedded technologies (40%). Machine learning and data science are gaining popularity. The demand for niches such as data sciences and network security remains evergreen. Gartner estimates 70% of employees lacking these skills.

PwC’s 2019 AI Predictions reveals 31% of executives worried about meeting the demand for AI skills over the next five years. 54% of the CEOs opine lack of analytical talent inhibits executives from gaining actionable information from data on hand. 55% of CIOs find the talent crunch as a major obstacle to innovate.

Finding external talent to bridge such skill-gaps is hard and costly. Many enterprises look to re-skill IT in-house, as a way out of the talent crunch. Such re-skilling is win-win. In-house employees develop and grow. The company can mould the employee to suit their requirements.

Here are the ways enterprises can re-skill IT talent.

Cloud Schooling

The cloud offers enterprises a cost-effective and viable way to re-skill IT employees.

Seagate offers a good example of how to get it right. The company’s shift to a cloud-native architecture in 2017 faced a major obstacle. The company lacked competency in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The CIO arranged for online training from Udemy and other sources. The AWS Lofts answered technical questions. The result was a seamless and successful transition.

Several cloud-based resources help IT professionals learn new niches or refresh their knowledge.

Skillsoft offers several handy instructional videos, e-books, audiobooks, test preps and practice labs on an array of subjects. Businesses may train their employees on everything from “how to use collaboration software” to advanced certifications in machine learning systems, robotics, and more.
Udemy, Coursera, Edex and other resources offer similar skill enhancement and certification programmes. Many of these programmes are free of cost and come from leading universities worldwide. These online portals allow businesses to leverage the best instructions and the best tutors from anywhere.
w3schools and others and open-source forums offer valuable resources.

Training

44% of enterprises adopt a digital-first approach, and the numbers increase by the day. Within the next 20 years, 90% of jobs will need digital skills. But two out of every three employees will already have left the education system. Worse, the pace of change means two out of three children in primary school today will work in jobs that do not exist now.

The traditional method of hiring based on technical competence is passé. Employers now look at the flexibility and adaptability of the candidate and train them for the desired tech skills.

CIOs will have to:

Collaborate with the government and training institutes to arrange refresher and skill enhancement courses.
Develop learning channels. For example, PwC’s proprietary app customizes learning through an assessment and learning paths for each user. PwC’s Digital Fitness app and associated learning channels offer podcasts, gamification, skill-building experiences, and quizzes.

Cross-Training

Another popular approach to re-skill IT employees is cross-training or “knowledge barter.” At the basic level, it entails job rotation. At an advanced level, it entails developing a blended learning approach. Senior employees mentor juniors.

Benchmarks abound in the industry. IT workers at HMHost International switch between building ERP systems to maintain point-of-sale applications. Staff in infrastructure and application departments likewise switch roles. Such cross-training becomes invaluable when talent leaves and the enterprise remains hard-pressed to recruit suitable replacements.

Success in cross-training depends on:

Motivating employees for the task. Cross-training mandates time over the routine job functions. It comes with a learning curve that impedes productivity in the short-term. The onus is on CIOs and HR to convince the employees of the career progression and other benefits on offer.
Developing a culture of openness and transparency, where sharing knowledge is the norm.
Having strong, competent and achievement-oriented “level 2” employees

Knowledge Leadership

Arranging for cloud courses or offering cross-training is not enough. CIOs and IT managers have to take up knowledge leadership. They have to take a proactive approach and regard re-skilling as a change management effort.

Successful CIOs link re-skilling employees with projects. Seagate, for instance, focused on migration from Google’s Gmail to Microsoft Office 365. The team imparted targeted courses, such as tutorials on how to clean out their cluttered inboxes, to over 25000 employees.

But re-skilling fails if the employees are not ready for it. They have to:

Develop a culture of openness and transparency. Encourage gaining knowledge and free sharing of information. Creating a culture of lifelong learning is indispensable for success.
Identify their future skills requirements and channel re-skilling efforts in the desired direction.
Focus on developing the basic logical and conceptual skills of employees. An agile skills development approach makes employees respond to changing market needs.
Articulate visible career pathways as rewards for employees who take up re-skilling.
Align the IT’s culture around building the best business outcomes and delighting the customer. Understand the goals of the business and forge shared values between enterprise goals and individual goals.

Proactive Intervention by HR

It is the responsibility of both the CIO and the HR team to re-skill the IT workforce.

AT&T started a massive re-skilling initiative after finding that half of its 250,000+ employees did not have competitive skills. Over 100,000 employees occupied roles set to become obsolete shortly. The company invested $1 billion to identify and train the targeted employees and make them ready for the jobs the company needed.

To Re-skill IT workforce, the CIO and HR should collaborate to:

Map out the existing skills among the workforce.
Develop a solid skills strategy co-opting the incumbent skills, future skills required, and a skill enhancement roadmap.
Create a data-driven skills inventory of each employee, to pin-point existing skills, desired skills and upskilling plans. This can be part of the performance appraisal process but requires the consent and support of the employee. The CIO will have to “sell” the proposal to the employee, and HR will have to motivate the employee to take it up.
Undertake skills assessment to gauge the effectiveness of training and other upskilling interventions.

85% of enterprise decision-makers understand the need for major digital transformation initiatives. The skill gap is the major obstacle, and the skill shortage intensifies as technology evolves. Employers who invest time and resources for the re-skilling stand to reap rich competitive advantages.

Nashiya Salim

Nashiya is a Content Strategist who has a keen eye for design and innovative ideas in content creation and marketing. A creative, who makes sure that whatever she puts her mind into, turns out as envisioned- unique and engaging. She believes that everything is beautiful when it is authentic and lives based on this idea. Marvelled with everything Nature, she loves to travel, experiment, create, learn new things, and be meaningful. She places her trust in love and humanity.