Talentwise: Future-proof your team

Roundup Episode Season One A roundup of the season’s highlights, featuring our stellar line-up of guests.   Some estimates predict that between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation and will need to find new jobs by 2030. And around 75 million to 375 million may need to switch to new occupational categories and learn new skills.  The more successful people today are not necessarily the ones with only math or technical skills. They are people with a combination of those and soft skills. Machines are great at doing structured tasks. But machines are not very good at interpersonal skills, creativity and large-scale problem identification.   Hiring needs have changed. The AI-mature companies are looking for hybrid profiles. Candidates should have interdisciplinary expertise.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 51.02 mins. 

Roundup Season One  Roundup of the season’s highlights, featuring our stellar line-up of guests.   These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 06.59 mins. 

Catherine B Roy Programs such as accounting programs stand to take away many job positions because those roles become redundant. It is very important for organizations to re-skill and re-deploy such employees whose jobs are at risk over the next few years.   Salespersons understand the sales process far better than any program. Human beings have empathy and creative skills that AI cannot match today. Organizations understand that their best sales strategy is to employ human intelligence at the frontline.  Even when AI does play a role in sales, human expertise is required to create the AI. SMEs should then become consultants or creators of AI programs. In any case, every individual also needs to keep up with the times and adapt to new technologies.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 24.43 mins. 

Subhabrata Saha Earlier, few factors affected businesses. Nowadays, many factors must be taken into consideration. PESTEL, OR Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors will affect businesses.   So, businesses have to undergo dual transformation. On the one hand they must reposition themselves to cope with change in society and consumption. And on the other they must plan to evolve to keep up with the future.  Businesses have to realize the inflexion point when it becomes imperative to transform and scale up. Kodak, for instance, did not transform at the right time, when photography and film went digital.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 28.51 mins. 

Pradeep Srivastava The staffing industry constitutes a 6-billion-dollar market in India. At the same time the temp staff sector is growing. But it is the blue-collar workers who constitute the bulk of this force. The more educated workforce is reluctant to go that way due to the felt insecurities. The top bracket, above a salary level of Rs30,000, has not yet moved into temp sector.  On the other hand, very skilled people, are in a sense, temps. They become consultants. They are not interested in getting permanent jobs. For example, there was this instance where a company needed to hire a person with specialized knowledge of a certain type of car batteries. Only about 200 people across the globe who had this specialized knowledge. None of them wanted to take up permanent employment.  Women have entered the workforce and the ratio has changed. In IT the ratio is nearly 51:48. This has also changed mindsets within organizations. Some organizations have policies where staff can leave any day, without any notice period. So, the distinction between temp and permanent has become fuzzy.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 36.02 mins. 

Prajjal Saha Changes and disruptions have happened throughout history. What is happening today is simply a repeat of such historic events. But the rate at which these changes will happen is not going to be as dramatic as projected. Changes will come in slowly, and unevenly across sectors and industries. This slower rate of change will allow people to adapt to changes. Rather than many people losing jobs, it would be more correct to say that over time more and more people will adapt to the technological changes that will happen. Most of the Indian Industry is still engaged in handling day to day problems, and not really thinking about the future. This also makes business sense for now. But there being no strong partnerships between the academic institutions and industry, no epoch-making changes or technological breakthroughs are happening in the country. These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 34.16 mins. 

Amit Bhargav The concept of Virtual HR is not very well known in India. But it is slowly catching on, whereby people work through a virtual HRMS platform, on flexi hours. The recruitment space too is undergoing changes, where hiring can happen through automated platforms. These platforms can also evaluate candidates up to a large degree.  The old system of employing people for HR is redundant and inefficient at many levels, since tasks like fulfilling legal requirements, payrolling, tracking leave and other such regular functions can easily be performed by software. This should leave human resources to be more gainfully employed. Training and upskilling could well be one of those more creative functions.  Recruitment platforms typically have not checked for aptitude. Neither have platforms which recommend training for blue collar workers. This means that batches for training are created based on location, instead of aptitude. This results in high dropout rates and is ultimately ineffective as a scheme.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 24.57 mins. 

Arun Muthukumar The periodic model of training, where training was imparted once every month or even less frequently, fails in today’s environment. Companies need to grow rapidly. And this means employees have to keep up with the growth vision. Continuous learning is the only solution.  Technology to impart continuous learning is available today. App based micro-learning alleviates many of the obstacles faced by organizations. It is available on-demand, and does not impose restrictions of dedicating time. Even managers may be reluctant to allow floor workers to spend a whole day in a training session.  In a country like India, training is effective when it is imparted in a language that is understood by the trainee. This means vernacular training is a must. These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 32.52 mins. 

Abhijit Bhaduri The availability of smartphones and the rise of social media has ensured that today communications are instant and continuous. Gone are the days when management had to communicate only once in a while, talking to shareholders or even employees- once a year or once every month.  Earlier, people were happy to keep working for the same organization for their entire careers. What they learnt and specialized in was good enough to last them an entire lifetime. All that has changed today. The new workforce wants to learn, experiment and move on to newer experiences.  Creative inputs have for many centuries come from “gig workers”. It’s only that now the term has come into vogue. This is also because work is getting skewed towards being more creative, rather than mechanical, since mechanical work has been largely taken over by automation and robotics.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.57 mins. 

Suman Ghose All industries will face disruption, without exception. Senior leadership has to prepare for change by having a receptive frame of mind We are moving on from the knowledge economy onto the creative economy, where creativity, passion and dedication will drive change rather than pure knowledge. Millennials will be the biggest audience, customer group and workforce of the future, so we cannot afford not to understand their mindset. These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 32.05 mins. 

Anita Borulkar Automation is inevitable and everyone, from management down to the shop-floor blue-collar worker, understands this. Some people may indeed lose jobs, but only if they are completely unwilling to upskill. Since every industry will be affected, upskilling will be necessary even if workers leave and try to get jobs elsewhere. So, it might make most sense if the upskill themselves in the same organization where they are engaged currently. Disruption is not a new phenomenon. It has happened throughout the history of mankind.  Today disruption is due to the coming of automation and robotics.  Curiosity, and a flexible mindset is key to remaining relevant in the future.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 21.38 mins. 

Rashmi Arya Chander  Disruption is not a new phenomenon. It has happened throughout the history of mankind.  Today disruption is due to the coming of automation and robotics.  Curiosity, and a flexible mindset is key to remaining relevant in the future.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.26 mins. 

Rashmi Arya Chander  Disruption is not a new phenomenon. It has happened throughout the history of mankind.  Today disruption is due to the coming of automation and robotics.  Curiosity, and a flexible mindset is key to remaining relevant in the future.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.26 mins. 

Ritu Ranade Every worker needs to be a global worker today, as the talent pool is accessible anywhere. Upskilling to global levels is the required standard.  Agility is key to Future Proofing the Team. As organizations focus more on customer experience, they re-orient themselves to think differently. Employees too, have to think in those terms.  Today focus on growth and the future needs to percolate across the organization, from the CXO level down to each and every employee.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.21 mins. 

Aseem Prakash Every time automation or AI replaces human effort it causes disruption. This is a fundamental challenge today, and leaders are aware of this challenge.  When AI or automation replaces human effort it also affects human identity, because it questions the very necessity of human effort, and relevance of human existence at least at the individual level.  Today AI assists workers in making informed choices, and surgeons in performing precision surgery. But it would not be too imaginative to think of a time when Ai will fully replace human effort.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 35.28 mins. 

Subhanjan Sarkar Rajib Aditya I and automation will cause huge job losses. Current concerns of society should provide some clues to where our future jobs lie. Food, ecology, climate change, biodiversity, water resources, alternative and clean energy are some of those grave concerns. Medicine, and health, especially areas such as tissue engineering, genetics, cancer research, nanotechnology and other biotech, will also be providing employment.  The other big disruptor is the concept of the gig economy. In a gig economy, how do we define a team, when the team is not necessarily the home team? These workers ultimately need not have conventional loyalty toward the organization. If people simply move from project to project, then the whole work ethic becomes dependent on an input-output measure, and the organization can no longer see value in training the workers.  If individuals are left to fend for themselves, they should rather be generalists than specialists, with a varied repertoire, to be able to adapt easily and reinvent themselves when jobs start becoming redundant due to AI and Automation.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 33.15 mins. 

Subbu Iyer Keys to future proofing lies in organizations viewing the team as Intellectual Property (IP) Producers and not just as human resources. This needs making Innovation Centric to the Culture.  The second key is incorporating Diversity. This leads to Transformation. It requires a change in focus- on Capability. Diversity is thus embraced as a strength and not seen as a weakness.  The third key is Globality, which derives from the previous cultural foci. We need to see Innovation as the journey of Excellence, making the quest for excellence a continuous endeavor.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.15 mins. 

Welcome to a special episode of TalentWise where we talk about the Future of Work. We have been speaking to some of the best minds in the industry on How to Future Proof your team. In this special episode we present a roundup of our discussion with guests who have been speaking to us for the past few weeks.  Our objective is to discuss thoughts and trends that will impact talent and business as we move into the Knowledge era driven by computing power. I hope you enjoy the episode and would request you to share it and rate it at iTunes and Google Play while you download or subscribe.   Run time – 32.13 mins. 

Rahul Gupta Companies exist to make human life better It therefore makes no sense if employees work towards making other people’s lives better but are miserable themselves. Organizations must therefore pay heed to the welfare of their own employees.  Employees should be motivated enough to think that they want to get to office in the morning and start working on a project that ties in with the objectives of the company.   Young people are underrated, and higher-up executives are overrated. A young employee gives the maximum bang-for-buck, when the early days they are highly enthused and motivated. More attention should be paid to the younger executives.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 31.46 mins. 

Bhawani Singh Shekhawat Education today is making the youth, at the very best, exam ready- but not job ready. Moreover, the grading system today leaves much room for doubt about the real abilities of the examinees.   It is a monumental waste of time and resources if the employer has to train the young workers all over again after they have spent 25 years of their lives in an education system that is not in tune with real-world requirements.  The social sector faces challenges in obtaining resources, since it is more lucrative to invest resources elsewhere. But at the same time more and more young people are also being attracted to work in the social sector.  These and more insights from the ground in this great episode of TalentWise.    Run time – 27:58 mins.