India will need 30 million digitally skilled professionals by 2026 and 50 percent of the current workforce would need to re-skill themselves in areas of emerging technologies, reveals a new report by TeamLease.

Today India has about 500 million people of working age.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder and Executive Director, TeamLease Services said despite that the country continues to face a skill crisis.

"Industry data suggests that only 49% of total youth (age group of 22-25 years) in the country is employable. Our own surveys have indicated that 75 percent of companies face skill gap in the industry. Even among people, who can stay in their current jobs, 40 percent of fundamental abilities are likely to change and thus re-aligning the skill strategy will be crucial for companies,” she said.

The report, ‘Skills Strategies for a Strong, Sustainable and Balanced World of Work,’ released TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, an apprenticeship programme from the TeamLease Services group, analyses the current market sentiment, highlights a varied range of effective skill strategies that can help organisations assess and augment their existing skill-development programmes to improve productivity, revenue and bottom line growth. 

The report highlights a seven-step skills strategy for corporates, which can directly impact their workforce productivity, revenue and growth. From developing a skills matric, conducting skill audit to targeting specific learning journeys and intermingling upskilling within the company culture; a comprehensive skill development strategy will lead to a more sustainable future of work. 

The proposed recommendation also includes having an effective outcome focused learning approach with structured impact evaluation metrics.

Chakraborty said labour and skill shortages are among the second most important external factors disrupting business strategy. Over 2 million jobs in AI, cyber security, and blockchain are expected to remain unfilled in 2023. 

Additionally, the workplace is evolving so rapidly that 76 percent of the global workforce is not equipped with the requisite skills to function in the new digitally focused workplaces. 

“As organisations across the globe adopt new pedagogies for skilling, it would serve them well to look upon skill development as an integral step to creating long-term value for the organiation. The adoption of sustainable skill development thereby creating a healthy talent pipeline in any country is the only way to address the vagaries of talent Inequity.  In this regard, HR leaders need to assess their skilling strategy and come up with a democratic, long term plan integral to creating sustained value for the organisation,” she added. 

TeamLease’s CHRO focused report noted that comprehensive skill programmes based on real-life practices will be the future of skilling. 

According to the World Economic Forum, investment in upskilling could potentially boost India's economy by $570 billion by adding 2.3 million jobs by 2030.