A Sneak-Peek to Learning and Development Trends 2020

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Looking back at 2019, it was a year of incredible technological breakthrough with AI Machine Learning being in the limelight. Gaining momentum dramatically, innovation has achieved a significant stature among the youth worldwide, where they are found to be experimenting with cutting-edge technologies and coming up with utterly innovative start-up ideas.

 

A Sneak-Peek to Learning and Development Trends 2020

 

India being the third-largest startup ecosystem is now home to over 8,900 tech-startups with 1,300 startups added in 2019. In this context, it is good to see that the growth of technologies has been ushering paradigm shift to the nation’s economic state as well and making room for the need of learning and development among the professionals across varied designations.

 

Getting Technology Adaptable

 

Becoming acquainted with emerging technologies takes time and adequate training for professionals working in the IT sector. Business leaders across the globe are concentrating on getting trained so that they can make the most out of the technological advancements and meet their business goals. Leading corporates are also making initiatives to organize training and development programs for their employees, aiming to enhance organizational performance. While there has been an impressive rise in the corporate training front in 2019, it is forecasted that 2020 will also be a year of great success in terms of professionals enrolling in top IT courses and focusing on continuous learning.

 

Learning and Development Trends 2020

 

With the steady shift to a knowledge-based economy and increasing demand for a vibrant and future-ready workforce, the effectiveness of training and development is being recognized more than ever before. Owing to this, companies across all the industries are taking relevant steps in embracing learning and development training — enabling their existing employees to bridge the gap between the industry expectations and their skills. Let’s have a look at few learning and development trends of 2020 we have found after rigorously researching and understanding the L&D functioning of different leading organizations.

 

Focusing on Agility: In a tight labor market, where recruiting an employee who is equally skilled and honest to the organization is not easy to find. In this scenario, companies are taking the plunge to retain their old employees by encouraging them to remain agile and be a lifelong learner. The L&D teams of companies are increasingly stressing upon motivating the employees to take up professional certifications and become an asset to the company.

 

“Agility is the ability to adapt and respond to change … agile organizations view change as an opportunity, not a threat.”

–Jim Highsmith, American software engineer

 

Reskilling the Talent: Considering the inculcation of new technologies in the operations of many industries, companies are left with no choice other than employing the technologies to bring in better ROI. Also, while the outcome of layoffs is quite adverse on the workforce, there remains a huge loss for the organizations as well- in multiple aspects. Employing new talent which can be a troublesome job for the human resource team of the company, it takes lesser hassle to reskill the existing talent. Employee skill development is being included as a priority in the L&D plans of top-notch companies now. From reskilling the talents by enrolling them into artificial intelligence courses to making them learn tableau and data science, companies are leaving no stone unturned to make sure their employees are equipped with new-age skills.

 

Boosting organizational cultures: Undeniably, one of the top most features which insists the employee to stay in the company is its organizational cultures. Taking this into consideration, companies are deciding upon taking the benefit of learning and development programs to heighten a culture within the organizations’ that are aligned appropriately to the immediate as well as future goals. Companies’ business strategy synced with the overall organizational culture puts a substantial impact on the employees’ capabilities and business strategic objectives.

 

Technologies to look forward

 

From Artificial intelligence to Cloud Computing, technological innovations is already disrupting business in every industry, steering innumerable opportunities. However, there has been also a lot of debate and discussion regarding the technologies replacing several jobs across all the industries.

To justify that, it is been estimated that by 2020, 46% of the workforce will be absorbed in entirely new jobs that do not exist today or will be deployed in jobs that have drastically revamped skill sets.

Contradictory to this, according to Gartner AI will create 2.3 Million Jobs in 2020, while eradicating only 1.8 Million jobs, raising the spirits and hope of employers.

As they say, there are always two sides of a coin and each one has its one advantage and disadvantages. In the case of work and job ecosystem as well, the emergence of new technologies which stand as a job threat for many professionals, on the other hand for professionals who keep updated with the skills that are aligned with the technologies, attain a competitive edge in the job market.

Automation and digitization possess a lasting effect on the life of IT professionals. Right skills are required to keep thriving in the industry, which can save several jobs, ignoring them can ironically put a full-stop in the paths of career goals. The current situation when mass layoffs are happening worldwide, with top companies showing thousands of employees the exit door, a number of organizations and professionals are considering taking IT Certifications. They are now relatively more conscious and aware of the purpose of training and development compared to days when growth used to happen in the job without having any skills and expertise in trending software and technologies.

 

Towards a Eureka Moment

 

The beginning of a new decade sustains great hopes for the IT professionals who indulge more into L&D activities and develop their potentialities to make data-driven decisions and perform as per the need of the hour, meeting the dynamic needs of the industry. L&D teams are expected to come together to generate productive results based on the skill requirements of each employee. It has to be kept in mind, that L&D can only be beneficial if it is customized as per individual employee’s career goals and aspirations. Companies with rigid and one-size-fits-all L&D strategies can never attain success with those who have set flexible and quality L&D plans.


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