Skill Acquisition for the Digital Age: Study

People Matters in partnership with Simplilearn recently conducted a survey to study how organizations are building competencies and acquiring skill sets for the digital age. People Matters launched this study yesterday at People Matters TechHR 2017 pre-conference. The study involved understanding L&D priorities in the context of digital disruption and automation, how organizations are looking at re-skilling their employees, and how to leverage technology to deliver training.

The People Matters - Simplilearn L&D Tech Study on Skill Acquisition for the Digital Age aimed at exploring the state of the L&D function about digital technologies and the inclination of organizations towards online learning methodologies for re-skilling and up-skilling of their employees. The survey saw the participation of L&D professionals from 102 companies across industries and sectors.

Here are the key insights from the reports:

A majority of the respondents (88 percent) felt that their L&D processes and systems still need to mature to handle the new challenges of digital disruption.

The success of training initiatives depends on choosing the right audience which was reflected in the responses where 67 percent chose “willingness to learn” as the key indicator of trainability.

Among the surveyed organizations, more than 60 percent preferred to train and redeploy existing talent, i.e. skill acquisition instead of hiring skilled talent from outside.

75 percent of the surveyed organizations agreed instilling a “digital mind-set at the leadership level is a primary responsibility of the L&D teams in the immediate future.

Business teams are emerging as key stakeholders in deciding on domain and technology specific courses to be imparted to employees. This increase of ownership is felt strongly by 44 percent of the organizations covered and marginally by 32 percent.

Additionally, the study provided some insights on online and certification courses relevant to both L&D teams as well as service providers that operate in the L&D ecosystem.