Article: Podcast: Digital will be the key skill to withstand the COVID-19 impact

Skilling

Podcast: Digital will be the key skill to withstand the COVID-19 impact

Listen to this interesting interaction between Raghav Gupta, Managing Director – India & APAC, Coursera and Ester Martinez, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of People Matters where the former talks about the rapidly evolving jobs and skills and the need for organizations to redesign their reskilling strategy to cope up with all the changes brought forward by the pandemic.
Podcast: Digital will be the key skill to withstand the COVID-19 impact

If reskilling is one of the biggest opportunities for businesses to ready their workforce for the future, it is also one of the biggest challenges. Without accelerating our progress on the skills agenda, we won’t have the talent to take advantage of the new jobs we are creating. This is both a business and an HR challenge, and it, therefore, demands organization-wide interventions to deliver results. Companies that unlock reskilling at speed and scale will transform at a pace that will leave their competitors behind.

Recently in a podcast by People Matters, Raghav Gupta, Managing Director – India & APAC, Coursera and Ester Martinez, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of People Matters reflected on the pandemic’s impact on jobs and skilling, and what are the key skills that will determine the future of businesses in the post COVID-19 world. 

To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforce now. In fact, according to an observation made by Coursera, as shared by Raghav during the podcast, “Industries and companies with most skilled talent, especially in tech skills, have noticed better stock market performance especially in COVID-19 times.”

Commenting on the top skills that organizations should consider, Raghav puts forward an interesting point of view. He says, “A few years ago, good management was a primary lever to drive a business – you have a degree from a good business school, have experience working in diverse industries for over 20 years, have worked as a CEO, and have a strong team of managers. But what we are currently seeing globally and partly in India is that technology is now the primary lever to drive a business.”

Reflecting on the top skills, referring to Coursera’s intelligence and insights, Raghav shares that today, three domains matter the most to organizations and people when it comes to skilling:

  • Technology: Computer Networking, Databases, Human-Computer interaction, Security, etc.
  • Data Science: Data Visualization, Statistical Programming, Database Management
  • Business: Business skills focusing on digital transformation

How do we make people adaptive to continuous learning during this time was a critical concern that emerged during the interaction. Raghav further shares a four-pronged approach in this podcast, which consists of:

  • Plan
  • Curate
    Engage
  • Measure

“We need to realize that the primary job of people right now is to perform the job they have (given the fact they are adapting to new working ways), and not learning. We have to understand how we can get people motivated to learn,” shares Raghav.

Listen to the full podcast here:

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Topics: Skilling, Learning & Development, #PMPodcast

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