News: AI/ML & Digital Marketing identified as top 2 skills to drive future growth: Survey

Skilling

AI/ML & Digital Marketing identified as top 2 skills to drive future growth: Survey

While 40 percent of the surveyed companies realize that investing in skilling is key to nurture these skills, 47 percent of them are yet to assign a budget for upskilling.
AI/ML & Digital Marketing identified as top 2 skills to drive future growth: Survey

A recent survey by Great Learning highlighted that further learning and skilling opportunities for employees is instrumental in boosting organizational performance, as 78 percent of the surveyed companies shared that sentiment. The findings further reveal that the tech upskilling in skills like AI/ML, Digital Marketing and Design Thinking is considered to be crucial for boosting organizational performance. 

Here are some insights from the report:

The top skills to drive future growth

25 percent of the surveyed companies believe Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are the most crucial skills needed to ensure an organization’s growth in the future. Digital marketing emerged as the second most important skill to have with 19 percent choosing it as most crucial. Followed by Design Thinking, which 10 percent of companies indicated as most important. 

Apart from these, skills related to the Internet of Things (IoT), robotic process automation (RPA), and natural language processing/generation (NLP/NLG) each garnered around 5 percent votes.

But identifying the top skills relevant for the future growth is only the first step, the even more challenging part is helping the talent in building these skills. 

Hari Krishnan Nair, Co-founder, Great Learning said, “The technology skills gap among employees is one of the biggest challenges that organizations in India are beset with.”

Dealing with skills shortage

While upskilling (40 percent) seems to be the natural choice to bridge the tech talent gap, 37 percent of the surveyed companies are also using hiring to make up for the demand and supply gap. Interestingly, 22 percent of companies are hoping to beat the talent gap by outsourcing these roles. 

It is a good sign that the majority of the organizations are aware of the need for upskilling, but awareness is not enough anymore, it is now the time to act. 

Investing in upskilling talent

47 percent of the surveyed companies are yet to assign a budget for upskilling, while 53 percent have already set aside a budget for employee tech upskilling.  

In terms of the size of the upskilling budgets, as per the survey, close to 30 percent organizations spend more than a lakh per employee per annum on upskilling. In fact, around 14 percent spend more than Rs. 3 lakh per employee per annum for tech upskilling.  

The tech upskilling programs are hence being driven and funded by the company and many organizations have started taking a lead towards preparing their workforce for the future. With about 50 percent companies sharing that their tech upskilling programs are either entirely or partially driven and funded by the company, the hope for skills gap to be bridged soon has been instilled. 

Interestingly, the culture of self learning can also be observed to be expanding as 22 percent companies share their upskilling is driven by employees but either partially or fully reimbursed by the company. 

Well, it is no news that the world of work is changing rapidly and there are many other socio-economic and political challenges for companies to deal with as well. Amidst so much chaos, if companies can identify the right path for future growth and help their workforce move in the right direction and grow with the company, the future for the entire global economy can be brighter. 

As Nair also mentioned, “Skilled employees will continue to be the biggest asset for any organization going ahead and while options like lateral hiring and outsourcing may help in the short term, from a cost and effectiveness point of view, upskilling is the best way to stay competitive in the long run.”

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Topics: Skilling

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