The power of continuous learning in today’s workforce; top Infosys exec explains why 

Technology transformations are becoming a part of the day-to-day work environment. Gone are the days when you could be an expert in one technology and stick with it for years. The last two years of the pandemic have taught us the importance of readjusting to situations promptly. If your employees haven’t cultivated a learning mindset, things can prove difficult.  

As an organisation, it is in your best interests to help employees develop a mindset where constant reskilling and upskilling programs are part of an employee journey. Earlier, there used to be one big initial learning block, for instance, fresh college graduates going through a foundation course. After that, there would only be just-in-time training when required. But now, the focus has to be more on micro and macro learning as part of the skilling journey. An effective learning ecosystem involves a hybrid infrastructure that promotes anytime, anywhere learning and practice-led pedagogy.   

Why should organisations look at reskilling or upskilling? 

It is easy for an organisation to fall into the trap of matching skillsets to particular roles and sticking to that. But having a pro-skilling mindset presents organisations with not just the flexibility to move around talent, but also save on upfront business costs. Let’s see how.   

Immediate business advantage 

Upskilling employees offers an inherent business advantage. Per capita cost to acquire new talent for a mid-level or managerial role, can be huge if you are recruiting externally. Instead, if you reskill and upskill existing talent within your organisation, that cost is much lower. Investing in developing an internal skilling programme may come with upfront costs, but in the long run it will pay for itself in terms of savings from hiring externally. 

 
Preventing worries of a changing landscape for the employees 

A constantly changing technology landscape can bring a lot of uncertainties for an organisation and its employees. But if an employee is assured that their organisation will invest in them via reskilling programs continually, they will not jump ship easily. With the promise of ensuring employees can learn and utilize the latest tech skills, they will naturally bring a lot of motivation to the table. This secures the organisation from worrying about employee attrition. Even threats such as AI taking over jobs, would not be a factor of worry for employees who are on a lifelong learning path in an organisation. 

 
Improves Talent Strategy 

An organisation has to ensure the talent strategy is focussed around reskilling and upskilling at multiple stages. At the entry level, fresh college graduates should be hired as they bring in new ideas and question the status quo. This should be 20-30% of the hiring pie. This set will replace the 30-40% of the existing employees, who are taking on higher responsibilities as they have acquired the necessary skill sets over time. This cycle has to continue so that employees are self-motivated to reskill themselves.  

When it comes to hiring talent externally, disruption can happen by hiring talent at adjacent skill levels. Specifically, hiring at a lower cost and reskilling them to fulfill higher positions. This sends an impressive message that your organisation is willing to invest, reskill and upskill a newcomer which is a huge competitive advantage.  

 
Reskilling and upskilling doesn’t necessarily mean taking a sabbatical 

There are various approaches to reskilling and upskilling. Organisations can have instructor-led cohorts which can be combined with self-paced practice infrastructure. If discussed with your team leads, you can make time for such cohorts without disturbing your current work commitments.  

Then there are adjacent learning or continuous learning strategies, where you are building up on your existing skills to add something new to the mix. This too doesn’t require taking time off.  

It’s only when you are learning a brand new technology that you may need some focussed time off. If organisations look at this time off as an investment into future cost savings in terms of talent strategy, it works to the advantage of both parties.  

 
Creating programs customized to your organisation 

Another way to approach reskilling and upskilling is by identifying motivated employees and putting them together in a sort of dream team. The objective is to have specific learning modules which play to the strengths of each team member. This team should obviously be led by mentors who can accelerate the learning of the new team members, while they are working on a project. Motivated employees are thus developing a new digital muscle that can be a boost to the bottomline of the organisation.  

 Leveraging Existing Learning Platforms 

One may wonder why an organisation needs to invest in its own learning programs when there are so many online-learning apps and services? The edtech boom in India has definitely provided us with a good set of existing educational content at a cost. If an organisation does not have an in-house learning and development department, it can be outsourced to existing services. But organisations need to realize that talent is not a big differentiator on the market. The talent has to have the ability to come up with new ideas. There is more value in working with such external organisations in customizing these courses so that your employees stand out and have an edge over everyone else. You have to have your own secret sauce, your own niche to give your employees that edge. 

Looking at the advantages above, investing in a learning and development department should be considered as a business decision. Inculcating a reskilling and upskilling mindset among employees will only prove beneficial to an organisation.  

Views are personal. The author is Senior Vice President and Head - Education, Training and Assessment at Infosys