Those who keep track of recent world events would’ve noticed the alarmingly shortening interval between so-called “once-in-a-generation” disruptive events.

Whether natural like floods, pandemics, forest fires, or man-made like entire economies collapsing à la Greece and runaway retail inflation, these events leave an indelible mark on the workforce.

Just like how the Bubonic Plague that wiped away two-thirds of Europe’s population upended the social class structure and redistributed power among the working class, a similar albeit slower, morphing of the workforce is taking place right now.

And as we go through yet another foundational transformation in the workforce, now is a good time to ask what will be the key drivers in the journey towards workforce 2030.

Location Agnosticism Will Become The Standard

As of March 2021, a square foot of office space in the Bay Area goes for anything between $85 to $105. Assuming that an average office space requires at least 2500 sq. ft of space to conduct day-to-day operations, this amounts to ~$200,000 of rent per month.

Whether it was mathematical ineptitude or pure vanity is hard to say, but it took a pandemic for several startups to realize the long-term impact of burning money on office space.

The results are already visible on the ground. Companies like Coinbase, Shopify, Quora, and VMware have adopted a Remote First policy. Others like Facebook, Twitter, & JP Morgan Chase are choosing a more conservative Partial Remote policy.

The shift to a more remote workforce is having a multitude of benefits for employees and employers. Indirectly, it has started the world onto a path of sustainable employment model.

Two key ways location agnosticism will change the workforce is in terms of workforce diversity and a drastic reduction in talent acquisition costs.

Diverse hiring powered by AI: With enterprises no longer restricted to hiring from the same 5-10 global tech talent hotspots, they will now have access to a wider pool from tier2 and tier3 cities. This talent, often just as if not more talented than a candidate from tier 1 cities, comes with the added advantage of being from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Reigning-in talent acquisition costs with smart hiring: As HR-tech improves by leaps and bounds thanks to data, and AI-powered talent intelligence platforms like Draup become the industry standard, the cost of talent acquisition has also dramatically reduced. Hiring for remote work has become easier than ever with easy availability of quality talent data that enables HR teams to make data-backed hiring decisions.

But despite the above benefits of hiring for remote work, current trends indicate that HR teams are looking forward to a more sustainable and holistic solution to solve the looming talent gap.

A solution that at once both plugs the talent gap and solves the problem of skills redundancy, i.e., reskilling.

Reskilling Will Become The De-Facto Choice

While the trend of reskilling has been slowly picking up pace over time, the pandemic has accelerated its adoption.

Reskilling evangelists credit its numerous benefits that the companies are only noticing now when they find themselves cornered in the talent market.

These benefits include:

Reduced talent acquisition costs: With reskilling, companies no longer have to initiate the long drawn-out process of finding new talent and training them on skills and organizational etiquette. The talent is already there. They just need to be re/upskilled.

Attract new, competitive talent: In the age of expensive certificiation costs and dwindling mentorship opportunities, shrewd employees will never give up on a company-sponsored reskilling opportunity. By advertising your employee reskilling journeys, you are also attracting the kind of talent that always tries to polish and upgrade their skillsets.

Reduce attrition rate: On the flip side of the coin, employees would think twice before leaving an organization that offers them ample opportunities to reskill. It would be foolhardy to pass up on skills upgradation and vertical career movements within an organization whose culture and etiquette they are very familiar with.

However, despite these benefits, all is not well in the reskilling world.

While reskilling has been able to resuccitate the careers of several employees stuck in dead-end jobs, the same success rate is not seen across industries.

Even though once flourishing industries have been rendered obsolete with advancements in AI and have displaced millions of workers, millions of new, more sustainable jobs have been created and entirely new sectors have risen from the ashes of these fallen industries.

The problem is that these new emerging roles require a whole new skillset. While universities, as usual, are lagging with revising their syllabi, the onus has now fallen on enterprises themselves to cultivate this talent.

Many have risen to the occasion by creating in-house learning management teams and developing robust reskilling and upskilling strategies.

A recent survey revealed that a shocking ~40% of reskilling programs failed to produce the results to justify their continuation.

Given the fact that reskilling is fast becoming the choice of hiring teams over hiring for fresh talent, this is indeed a concerning statistic.

The pivot to remote work has exposed several kinks and inefficiencies of the hiring process. While HR tech can greatly ease the pain, the best bet would be to invest in reskilling.

Yes, this is despite the figure quoted above. If you examine industry trends closely, you’ll notice that reskilling plans fail primarily due to there being no reskilling plan in the first place!

To most companies, it’s just something they do.

As with any new paradigm/trend that is new to the market, reskilling too lacks a framework that enterprises can follow to leverage the maximum benefits out of.

Which is why Draup has analyzed over 4 million career paths to create the ideal reskilling framework for talent management teams. Reskilling stakeholders can now implement end-to-end reskilling solutions within their organizations using a powerful data-backed framework that takes all the pain out of reskilling. 

The proprietary Requirements Analysis Framework, finetunes and delivers your enterprise with a customized reskilling strategy that involves:

• Job roles identification
• Peer benchmarking
• Skills gap analysis
• Custom learning path generation
• Testing & iteration

This article is a part of the The Future of Work – Workforce 2030 webinar by Vijay Swaminathan, CEO & Co-Founder of Draup, where he talked about:

• New-age disruptions in workforce planning and development
• New HR business models upending traditional practices in the post-pandemic era
• Best tools and diversity best practices that companies are using to adapt to the future of workforce
• New skills and competencies that will be needed to compete in the new normal
• How employees and organizations can identify the gaps in key skillsets,
• And the different ways in which companies can enable upskilling and reskilling in the remote setup