INTRODUCTION
“Changing Paradigms of Employability in IT industry”
This document is a Practitioner’s view on the changing phenomenon of “employability” because of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution“driven by technological advancements like digital and automation revolution in IT Industry.
These insights may help us to identify the factors which would impact the future employability of IT Talent Pool for the benefit of industry and country’s economy. It also focuses on how HR/ Training/ Talent Management Professionals can play the role of a “Strategic Talent Partner” in grooming a “Future Ready” and “Malleable “IT workforce for the Digital Age.
THE CHALLENGE
The incredible change in today’s work environment amplifies the importance of organizational and individual flexibility. It is a reality of today’s workplace that organizations and the people occupy them need to keep adapting to survive. This is because the employee-employer relationship is no longer a long-term experience but based on value exchange between them.
The above said occurrence has now started manifesting itself in the most amplified manner as an existential crisis or transformational opportunity in today’s Indian IT industry.
The IT industry faced immense revenue and marginal pressures caused by vanishing cost arbitrage coupled with the looming threat of sudden redundancy of its workforce due to huge changes in technology and skills needed as a result of Digital revolution.
While the signals of such a scenario emerging was not unknown as the speed at which reality has stuck, the scale of impact and the apparently inadequate preparedness of the industry to deal with the situation has resulted in the current crisis.
Talented Manpower (Skills and Capabilities) being the most critical asset of this industry this crisis clearly falls under the realm of HR / Training / Talent Management Functions to step up and ensure that industry has a sustainable mechanism to ensure “workforce readiness” with large number of talent pool to meet future business demands.
THE EXPECTATION
As we find ourselves, in the threshold of next phase of industrial revolution, Corporate world for the first time is looking for thought leadership and guidance from the Talent Management / Training / Human Capital Functions to create a self-sustaining “Talent Refactoring” ecosystem which can help companies to groom or repurpose the existing talent pool to make it “future proof” workforce and create a sustainable talent pipeline equipped to meet the business needs of Digital Age. This catapults the HR / Training / Talent Management functions to the centre stage of corporate strategy.
This contrasts with earlier phases of industrial revolution where, core engineering, finance and economics functions were the key driver functions of the revolution.
THE FUNDEMENTALS OF EMPLOYABILITY
Let us start with understanding the fundamental concepts of Employability…………………
A summary of numerous research studies defines “Employability “as a “capability” to execute a work as per defined standards. It is an outcome of optimal blend or amalgamation of competencies which include Hard Skills, Soft Skills and Personal Attributes (collectively called “Competencies”) which makes a person productive in any job endeavor.
While hard and soft skills are trainable to a great extent, personal attributes are an outcome of how the incumbent is molded based on the society, education, environment, culture, and the background.
Thus, a person who has excellent employability skills would mean - his or her readiness to start making meaningful contributions in the respective job role at expected standards based on a combination the above explained competencies.
Thus, the Core of Employability is “Competency”
The ground is set, let’s meet in the next issue…
About the Author
Lakshminarayanan K V is a Senior HR/OD professional with more than two decades of rich experience in entire gamut of HR function. He also a expert Career Counsellor, Guest Faculty, Behavior Analyst, Professional SME Speaker and an Indologist.