What are upskilling and re-skilling? Do these two terminologies have the same meaning?

Let’s explore…

Re-skilling and upskilling are terms often used interchangeably, but both terms have different literal meanings.
Reskilling means coaching your employees to acquire the skills for an entirely different occupation. Upskilling means teaching your employees advanced skills for their current occupation.
Both of the terms are the same about acquiring new skills, but the context of each varies. To explain more; re-skilling is more about enabling employees to perform an entirely new role, while up-skilling is about training the employees to perform the job more efficiently with more knowledge.

According to the World Economic Forum’s report titled “Future of Jobs”-

• 50% of all employees will need to be re-skilled by 2025 as the adoption of technology increases
• By 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labor between humans and machines
• 97 million more jobs may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labor between humans, machines, and algorithms
• By 2025, for those workers who stay in their roles, the share of core skills that will change is 40% to 50%

Keeping the above in view, the report sheds light largely on the importance of re-skilling and upskilling. Because of changing technologies, skill training has become a critical activity for organizations, governments, and other businesses.

Advantages of re-skilling and upskilling:

• The cost and time associated with up-skilling and re-skilling often prevents organizations from investing time in training their current employees. In the short-term, it might seem flexible to hire a new talent; but in the longer term, it is found that reskilling and upskilling the existing talent is more beneficial
• There is a shortage of rightly trained people to match the requirements. And, if such an individual is discovered, they may need to be up-skilled at some point due to the ever-changing nature of technology
• An existing employee is well-versed in the culture and inner workings of the company or an organization, which helps them add value faster than a new hire
• Internal promotion and even horizontal mobility keeps employees motivated and more engaged

Re-skilling and up-skilling strategies may include:

• Identifying the right candidate
• Finding the correct method, strategies, and tools
• Allocating and setting a time frame for employee transition

Conclusion:

Upskilling and re-skilling could be more advantageous than hiring new talent. It requires a company to thoroughly evaluate if the skills required to perform the task really need a new candidate or if it could be fulfilled with the existing employees just by opting for appropriate strategies to upskill or re-skill them.

Instilling a new skill could be very effective if it were made easily accessible, interesting, and simplified. Companies can benefit from using the right strategies, setting up the time frame, and utilizing the right tools to structure a learning environment. There are many tools available to help organizations bridge the talent gap. Edurigo, a learning experience platform equipped with game-based and micro-learning tools, helps in designing highly configurable and use-friendly learning experiences and supports in increasing knowledge retention. Whether it is a sales enablement program, corporate training, or academic learning, Edurigo provides full flexibility in organizing effectively and efficiently.

What do we need to do to fix India’s education problem? Is it even a problem? India has 15 Lakhs schools both Govt and Private put together.

We have 24 crore students enrolled in these schools. That’s roughly 19% of our population! Which means a lot of future human resource in development.

Of this, 15.6 crore (that is 65%) is studying in government schools and remaining 35% in private schools.

Let’s focus on teachers now.

We have total 94 Lakhs teachers for these 24 crore students which makes our teacher to student ratio 1/25 which is NOT bad at all.

(We have more teachers than China if that comparison helps)

Then where is the problem?

The problem is not the number of teachers or for that matter school infrastructure. Indian government has done a fabulous job over last 20 years and created a school in every nook and corner of India with all basic facilities. The school will have all the required artifacts like flash cards, wooden educational toys etc.

How do I know all that? Well, because I taught in three government schools for 5 years from 2010-2015 (of course part time over weekends)

In my opinion our education problem is the quality of delivery. We need to make huge efforts in training our teachers. I am sure we have a lot of very good teachers even in government schools but that percentage may not be enough.

Teaching is one profession which requires special skills and more than skills a strong desire to impart that skill.

Based on my 5 years of interactions with teachers in some government schools, I feel we are missing that big time despite of them earning a decent salary.

Can we train our teachers overnight? We can but it will take another 20 years and still the gap in quality will be huge as private schools are becoming modern everyday.

So what’s the solution?

Digitization of content and remote delivery of teachers training is one solution so that our teachers are better prepared. We should start that on war footing. That’s one..

Two, The quality digital content should also make its way into our physical classrooms and the teacher in the classroom can become more of a coordinator or consultant. (someone who is available to clear doubts).

There are too many Edtech companies are trying exactly that but they are targeting a student population which is already spending 1 Lakh to 7 Lakhs per annum in their respective private schools.

Just think about this, the parents who are spending that much on school but still need to buy an Edtech tablet. What does it tell us? Even teachers in those private schools have gaps which Edtech is claiming to fill. Right?

Then just imagine the gaps in government schools and middle class private schools.

So digitization of education content and digital delivery is the only scalable solution for our education problem if we really want to solve this problem in the next decade.

-Nikesh Jain

Mobile devices have transformed our lives. Starting from messaging and calling now to ordering our food or booking a taxi, or elevating our communication drastically. The usage of mobile devices is boosting enormously in the world of learning as well.

What is m-learning?

Mobile learning or m-learning allows users to browse and learn at their own pace on their devices as convenient to them. It empowers their learning, adding value to them. A lot of organizations are adopting mobile learning to increase knowledge and to engage their employees.

Organizations that were already using e-learning platforms to train their employees are now transitioning to m-learning for the training and development of their employees. Whether it is professional training, personal development, or everyday life, modern individuals receive their information through their mobile devices. Due to the increased importance of mobile phones, interest is aroused towards implementing m- learning, making it popular in the learning world.

But what is the reason that mobile learning has taken the learning and development industry by storm? And why is it a great opportunity for every corporate organization?

Let’s dig in.

Learning is Accessible and Flexible

Mobile learning renders accessibility and flexibility to learners. Learners can access the courses anytime and anywhere, making it possible to learn and train themselves even after or before office hours at the own comfort level and even from their home. Even while commuting or even during breaks.

One of the major problems with adapting to e-learning was that it had to be taken during office hours, making the learning a bit difficult because it is a time when employees have various tasks scheduled. The perfect way to replace that problem lies in the adaption of
m-learning.

Just-In-Time Learning

Technology has made our lives rapid. It has increased our productivity, but it has also transformed our lives progressively busy, making it possible to complete larger volumes of work and meeting new tasks and responsibilities. A rapid work life requires a quick learning methodology.

Bing, m-learning!

M-learning is ideal for this speedy life as it provides employees with just-in-time training. Short learning courses are learning modules that are no longer than 4-5 minutes can be quickly accessed by the learners to learn or revise the skills while on the job.

Higher Completion Rates

It is high time to sit in front of a screen for long-duration courses. M-learning courses are bite-sized, enabling one to complete courses quickly and move on to the next. It increases the completion rates as learners are not required to invest a lot of time.

Higher Engagement

Social media platforms engage with short visually appealing information, making us customary to receive knowledge or information in a brief and more concentrated way. Mobile learning contents are designed in a visually appealing manner, with engaging interactivities.

Personalized Learning

Personalized learning is another learner-centric approach. M-learning is popular because it has a learner-centric approach to learning, offering learners freedom and accessibility. It is suited for providing learning perfectly customized to the learner’s strengths, needs, skills, and interests.

Edurigo provides users with a microlearning and gamification-based learning experience, along with access to content authoring tools and a cloud-based system.

Learning be it corporate or educational traditionally takes place in a classroom via an instructor. With changing time some learning moved to online world through self paced content be it a video or any other document available online.

Both these approaches worked but did not solve the fundamental problem of learning that is retention of knowledge. Any learning is useful when it can be recalled and applied when needed. Research has shown average human can retain learning for 30 days or max 60 days. If learning has to be retained beyond this period then a different approach is required.

It requires repetition or frequent interventions something similar to revisions that we used to do during our school and college days. How this can be achieved by a corporate? You do a POSH program and 3 months later 80% of that may get forgotten. That’s not useful. That’s where Qrigos (the gamified quizzes) can help. These are improvised quizzes that can be assigned to learners from time to time to reinforce learning and re-learning. Quick game quizzes with 4-5 questions which need be answered in a fun way keep learners engaged.

Please contact us to learn more about Qrigos a unique and fun way to learn!