Executive Voices 3 mins read

Training ensures the future of work

Learn why training is essential for employees to gain the fast-increasing number of skills needed today, and is critical for digital transformation.

Sven Roeleven Sven Roeleven

The total number of skills required for a single job is increasing by 10% a year, according to Gartner TalentNeuron.

At the same time, companies face continuously shifting skill requirements to differentiate themselves from the competition. And, as a permanent hybrid work environment is accelerated by Covid-19, one of the main challenges is continually upskilling employees to meet the requirements of remote interaction, social influencing, and productivity.

Trying to fundamentally change ways of working requires communication, understanding and training –all of which must be wedded together in a more intricate way.

As a result, the future of work demands a greater volume, velocity and variety of learning for both the success and advancement for the enterprise and for employees.

What’s wrong with traditional training?

First, it sometimes appears “random” to employees: The authors of the training might understand the importance and desired outcomes, but that could be inconsistently communicated to employees. Second, the training often turns out to be too late, not engaging enough, and too location-centric to respond to the shift of the future of work.   That’s problematic for attracting and retaining talent.

That’s why role-based, self-paced and continuous learning is absolutely necessary to increase organizational resilience. Employees intuitively understand that they must become continuous learners to keep their competencies up to date for success in their current role, and they must reskill regularly, or even upskill, to advance their competencies and career to jump into a new higher-demand role.

In addition, just-in-time trainings can enable employees in an agile fashion at the time when it really matters; for example, to prepare for a campaign launch. The acknowledgement of employees growing their learning skills is critical for enablement success, as is gamification to make learning fun and competitive at the same time.

This year at Software AG, we introduced a Digital Badging program to acknowledge our fast-learning employees, partners and customers. Over 2.800 badges have been earned and claimed in Credly within just five months’ time.

Seven hundred employees in the Go-to-Market area participated in the worldwide competition “Tour d’Excellence” – a gamification with more than 30 prize winners of different “Jerseys” in the Tour, all prominently visible in a leadership board on our intranet.

Acknowledged, continuous learning for optimizing competencies is key to further grow your career. And is a critical element to the success of your digital transformation.

Check out vacancies at Software AG below for new opportunities.