Magazine BEAST #16 2019

#Business | Human Capital
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Once they show how the initiative is managed and the results
it starts to produce, others will increasingly welcome the
initiative as it aims at supporting their employability.
One might also say that upskilling programmes represent a
considerable investment. Arguably, financial services seem to
be overly positive about the future, as if stability was a shield
to solve the challenges that technology and new customers’
demands bring… I could tell this short story of a discussion
between a CEO and a CFO with the latter challenging his/her
boss about the costs of the upskilling action. First, the CFO
goes: "We are going to invest a lot of money in our people skills
but, what if they leave? The investment will be gone!". And the
CEO answers: "Yes, but what if they stay and we don’t upskill
them?"
What are the main ingredients of an effective upskilling
strategy? What are your main pieces of advice to the HR
managers who would like to start working on such a strategy?
CS: As usual, the secret lies in careful preparation. The process
starts with the need to ask the right questions before even
launching such a strategy: checking on stakeholders’ alignment,
on management sponsoring, support of the employees’
delegation, equipment of the HR department, availability of
suitable training, etc. If those questions are not answered prior
to starting, they will arise during the deployment and will slow
the process down or even disturb it quite a bit.
It also takes a good understanding of the "future of jobs" in the
company. Nowadays the maximum time horizon to predict a job
change is around a year. Understanding which ones will remain
stable – the vast majority over one year –, which ones will be
augmented or disappear, and finally which jobs will be created or
replaced, due, for instance, to turnover or retirement, is a critical
and difficult exercise for companies as from a certain size.
Once this information is gathered, understanding current
people skills – holistically, soft and hard skills – is the next step.
Then comes the understanding of the capacity for an individual
to perform augmented or new jobs. Naturally, this is related
to individual skills but also to personal motivation as well. Most
of the time, even if both are present, substantial training will
be needed and the individual will need to commit to the effort.
In return, the employer will secure a given job to the employee.
The different steps require personal support and timely,
purposeful communication is very important. If done at scale,
it also requires some technology investment to perform all
these processes smoothly. But, in the end, it is worth the effort!
How would you define the current work environment?
What about the addition of new technologies, and AI more
specifically? How are they reshaping the workforce?
Thierry Kremser: In our current digital world, the work
environment is hyper-connected and data is virtually
everywhere. Technologies are transforming the way we live
and work: for instance, Artificial Intelligence and data analytics
tools now offer techniques to turn data into information and
information into insights. Our world has therefore become
more data-driven than ever. Moreover, "data" is not just an ITrelated
topic anymore. According to PwC’s 20 th CEO Survey,
which explores the needs and expectations of almost 1,400
CEOs from approximately 80 countries, 64% of CEOs believe
that data management will differentiate their business in the
future.
BEAST MAGAZINE #16