The Covid-19 Crisis Highlights the Need for “Digital Upskilling”…
The current pandemic has highlighted the need for digital tech skills as remotely working from home and virtual learning continue to move to the forefront. Every job is becoming a tech job in some way, in that moving forward, we will all need to know tech skills at some level. With the rapid change in tech advances the need to stay ahead of the curve and keep learning new skills becomes even more critical.
It goes without saying that tech specific jobs obviously require a deep intimate knowledge of the machinery, but as concerns grow over cyber security, even the knowledge of basic security awareness by the end-user (i.e., regular working folk) becomes increasing important.
As more workers continue to work remotely, these ever changing tech skills grow more and more important. (Listening to a routine IT call to a support/help desk can amusingly highlight this point and further highlight the need for the most basic of tech skills.)
“Digital upskilling” is increasingly becoming a buzz word this year and will be essential for workers moving forward into this new normal. As Reuters notes:
Digital upskilling is not new: Amazon announced a $700 million initiative to boost the digital skills of its workforce last year. PwC rolled out its own $3 billion program, and a flurry of other corporate giants from Nationwide to Home Depot to IBM are all doing the same. The COVID-19 pandemic pressed the fast-forward button, however, accelerating a tech shift already taking place.
Companies are becoming aware of this need and many are even providing incentives and even free learning opportunities to help workers as well as those unemployed or furloughed due to the Covid-19 crisis. This seems like a no-brainer for everyone to take advantage of.
In fact, LinkedIn has even set up a training hub, in partnership with Microsoft (opportunity.linkedin.com). It offers free training resources for the top 10 jobs with the greatest number of openings, steady growth during the past four years, a livable wage and skills that can be learned online.
Those in-demand gigs include software developer, digital marketing, IT admin, and data analyst.
I actually had to read this part twice and immediately click around to check out more when I read this. See here.
Source: “For workers, ‘digital upskilling’ puts tech trends on fast-forward” via Reuters.
