Would you be surprised that 60% of CEOs say comprehensive upskilling training programs are the key to growing company culture? Consistent learning at work prioritizes confidence building within the organization. It also improves productivity, loyalty, and retention in a company. 

The need for an agile workforce is the need of the hour in the corporate world. But, fostering one involves a holistic training approach with special emphasis on employee skill development. Investing in optimal employee training and development is crucial to a company’s growth strategy.

Even before the pandemic, many enterprises encouraged their people to meet evolving job roles, and this need has only doubled in the last two years. Moreover, although employee training and development have been important for quite some time, a lot of companies still treat employee learning as a siloed subset of human resources instead of making it an integral part of their business strategy.  

The popularity of cloud computing services has skyrocketed in recent years, with over 84% of organizations relying on the cloud for scalability and accessibility. However, what remains a concern is the growing shortage of qualified tech experts who can work efficiently with cloud applications. 

According to a recent report, over 74% of workers are willing to learn new skills or re-skill to stay competitive and remain employable. Henceforth, an increasing number of employees are looking for companies that can invest in their workplace learning and skill development. 

Companies are in the middle of an employee turnover tsunami spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the US alone, 4 million people quit their jobs in early 2021, creating economic instability across the country. That’s not all; a survey of 31,000 global workers conducted by Microsoft revealed that 41% of people are considering leaving their current company, indicating a possibility that the popular economic trend “Great Resignation’’ is here to continue even in 2022. 

The recent Uber hack, where hackers breached into the business-critical system of the ride-hailing and food delivery company, Uber, exposed how vulnerable businesses are to cyber-attacks. The breach compromised Uber’s internal systems and even prohibited employees’ access to internal tools like Slack and G Suite.  

According to a recent report by Korn Ferry, the global skills gap is worth $8.5 trillion, with an estimated talent deficit of 85 million workers by 2030. The brewing talent shortage is a real corporate concern, with 87% of HR managers and L&D leaders agreeing to have experienced a skills gap within their organization or are expecting the same in the next five years, as revealed in a recent McKinsey Global Survey. However, this widening gap is not a people gap. While there are a lot of job seekers out there, what comes as a shocking fact is that companies are still struggling to close open positions, especially in the tech team. 

In the last five years, the corporate training landscape has transformed drastically. With the widening skill gap, Learning and development (L&D) leaders in every company are looking at new approaches and making millions of investments to help employees develop new skills to fill the skill gap from within the organization.