Because of the work from home, enterprises now have to streamline their workforce, create operational structure and shift to remote and benefit models. The enterprises have to alter to the increased demand for data and cloud computing. So it is important to understand how one can effectively shift to the cloud and be innovative.
The pandemic has changed the way of working. Because of the work from home, the enterprises now have to streamline their workforce, create operational structure and change to remote and benefit models. The enterprises have to adjust to the increased demand for data and the cloud. The companies now have to re-train their employees. And the employees who have worked on-premise or are new to technology now have to learn new skills.
According to Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, Coursera, a large amount of the workforce will operate remotely even after things get back to normal and work from home is most likely to continue even in the post-Covid world. “With this, the number of organizations adopting digital and cloud is increasing. E-learning platforms like Coursera are observing deep-hunger for hands-on learning.”
Rochana Golani, Managing Director, Learning Services, at Google Cloud further added that organizations have realised that moving to the cloud gives them the edge in innovation and gives them the edge to reach their customers.
“In Covid times, we have seen innovation in how things happen and what work happens,” said Golani. During Covid, a lot of enterprises opted for the cloud to reach their customers and employees. People opted for the cloud to innovate quickly, save money and reach more people.
While one before one even starts migrating to the cloud, effective infrastructure and human capital is required to assess their cloud readiness. According to Golani, “90% of enterprise customers say that they will not be able to accelerate their digital transformation because they don’t have skills. We have to focus on the skills of the people. Every transformation starts with talent transformation. Not having the right people to do the transformation is a bigger problem. Technology and infrastructure are infinite now. Infinity allows people to be more innovative. As a leader, one should think about how to drive cloud mindshare. This can be done through ‘skills development’. Human capital is the biggest asset one can have in moving to the cloud.”
Effective retraining
When thousands of people are working in a company, re-training becomes quite a massive task. Some things need to be kept in mind before re-training thousands of employees on the cloud. “Digital transformation requires the cultivation of the right skills throughout the organization. One requires a deep-skilling strategy for the entire company,” said Ruchira Sharma, Head- Skill transformation, APAC, Coursera.
According to Sharma, the reskilling strategy needs to have three key components- every team needs to go through a literacy oriented skilling program, implementation of role-based skilling, and investing in innovative use cases like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, etc.
“The company should begin by assessing the state of its current skills and take a dispassionate look at the existing state of skills within the organization. Then proceed to set a goal. The ability to use data to analyse the competencies and skills within the company can be a key differentiator and this analysis also helps to find the right talent pools within the company and then make related hiring decisions,” Sharma said.
Sharma recommends that organizations must not approach digital transformation as a one-time effort but rather think of it as an ongoing business discipline and make sure to track progress over time and keep making necessary changes to make sure you are on the right path.
Training goes beyond HR
Learning and development have long been HR-domains. Cloud brings a paradigm shift in learning requirements. Apart from HR, IT, Finance and other business functions should also be looking at re-fueling for the cloud. “When learning is cultural in an organization, everyone learns,” Golani said. “You have to bring everyone on basic literacy so that they can all start thinking about how does this change my work and how I am going to innovate and help IT. Every leader should think about leveraging the cloud to its full potential. IT is the core of the business now. IT is not something that sits and enables the business. IT is THE BUSINESS.”
While working on the cloud, traditional skill sets may not be enough. The enterprises need to focus on some essential skills to be cloud-ready. Sharma says that any large scale move to the cloud needs to be backed up by new capabilities. “It’s not just lifting & shifting what you are doing on to the cloud. It’s re-thinking the way the entire company now operates. Legal issues, security, privacy are different in the cloud. To complete the seismic transformation in the operations of the company, the leaders must fundamentally re-think people’s strategy because skilling and hiring for new emerging roles require a wholely different approach,” Golani said. It has been found that a successful deep skilling program includes human skills, business skills and technology skills. These three act as building blocks of competencies and as a force multiplier.
