with technology providing scale and personalization of the learning journey; all employees will have their own access to resources (such as pre-recorded training videos or “live” experts) to help him/her skill up just enough to get a job done in a short period of time. Learning will be largely unstructured and interest/need driven. There will be more cross-training to create redundancy for split team
How do you see the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world of work five years down the line? Five years isn’t a very long time for drastic changes to occur at the systemic level. A post-COVID-19 world subjected to some soul searching will eventually find more responsible business owners and directors actively reviewing the focus of managers to balance their profit motives with a sustainability and risk management agenda. As with times before, businesses will be grappling with increased costs. This time putting in place resilient supply chains, retooling their workforce, and maintaining lower density offices (saddled with additional cleaning and sanitizing costs and the like) will force businesses to look beyond reviewing their cost structures and fundamentally change their operating models to survive. Businesses will look different “under the hood”. This newfound resiliency will come in the form different systems but more importantly the types of leaders and diversity of talent innovating literally from anywhere they choose. june 2020 |
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arrangements and a heightened awareness of the importance of succession planning for mission critical (not just senior) roles L&D professionals may spend more time curating learning experiences and running special programs for selected talent pools to provide enhanced learning experiences through crossfunctional projects, job rotations and other applied learning opportunities to accelerate growth, using data to support the organi-
zation’s investment in such programs
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hire and reskill? How does this intersect with the war for talent to open up new perspectives on employee engagement and talent retention? First, the shift will be from acquiring to accessing talent. The organization has to be open to all types of employment arrangements in order to access the highest quality talent it can and move away from “owning” the talent. The employee value proposition, a big part of which is its culture, will be necessary to attract and emotionally bind these talents to the firm or to keep them coming back for a great experience. Selecting talent will start with looking for people who have the ability to keep learning new skills and possess the mental resilience and emotional maturity to handle change and ambiguity well. They have to be teamoriented in addition to being achievement-oriented. The use of skills-based and scenario-based testing will help remove hiring biases in the selection process. There should be more use of peer hiring panels as fit will be deemed a critical criterion in ensuring a new addition to a high performing team doesn’t negatively affect team dynamics. Learning will eventually be “democratized”
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