Digital upskilling

Even long before the pandemic, many Indian companies, both tech and non-tech, started embracing disruptive technologies in their everyday routine. In a nutshell, digitization was present in their workplace development strategy. But thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak and the lockdown that followed, technology adoption was further intensified. Unfortunately, all is not well in the job market. When digitization was skyrocketing like never before, other industries faced salary cuts, job loss, etc. All these became a nightmare when the unemployment rate in India reached 10.72%. However, the positive side is that tech jobs are surging. Digital upskilling is the only way to revive the failing economy and mitigate the unemployment issues. 

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The influence of digitization in the workplace environment is no joke. Although the answer for whether the machine will take over human jobs or not remains in a swing, the current time is suitable for humans and technology to work together. An estimate suggests that, roughly, over 500 million people in India, especially, from lower rungs of the socio-economic pyramid will have acquired new digital skillsets by 2022. This technology acceleration will open half a billion new opportunities in the job market. Therefore, it is an advantageous time for people in the 18 to 34 age groups who have greatly adopted technology. As per the Naukri Job Report for May 2021, hiring for tech roles was at an all-time high in May 2020, even more than the pre-covid levels. Owing to the wave of digitization, the IT-software sector recorded a robust +14% growth in hiring in May 2021. Tech hiring emerged as the star of the report with a surge of 39% compared to 2019. 

However, in order to profitably benefit from the tech job surge, job seekers should also embrace digital upskilling. Even though the job market welcomes more entries, the future will bring machines as the competitors of humankind. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum (WEF), 85 million jobs might be disturbed by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines by 2025. Besides fighting fellow humans to get preference, mankind will face a far worse crisis due to digitization. The only door out of the mess is to prepare ourselves for a tough fight. Humans should take up digital upskilling and patch the gap between technological improvement and job demand.

Educate candidates with new skillsets

India is a highly populated country with over 75% of its people living in rural areas. Even though technology and digitization is a normalized concept in the urban fronts of the country, tier 2 & 3 cities and rural areas still fall behind in adopting them. Especially, people from underprivileged backgrounds find it hard to have digital skills that are required to enter top companies. Reports suggest that over 1 million Indian youths join the workforce every single month, but less than half of them are suitably employed. This happens due to a lack of employment skills including easy communication, fluency in English, financial literacy, tech knowledge, etc. Therefore, to bridge the gap and make them suitable for the job, digital upskilling along with basic training on life skills is mandatory.

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Leverage online learning to master digital upskilling

In order to digitally upskill the candidates, education institutions should primarily implement advanced learning methodologies. Initially, education institutions relied highly on instructor-led classroom-based teaching and face-to-face training. Even though in-person classes have many advantages, they are often very expensive and a candidate from underprivileged background might find them hard to afford. Therefore, digital upskilling classes are slowly moving to online modes. Many candidates are even taking up self-paced learning to leverage flexible teaching options. It provides candidates with full control of when and how they want to engage with materials, allowing them to progress independently and customize their learning experience.