Overcoming Digital Challenges with Learning & Development

A lot of businesses, across the world, are disconnected digitally and may not have access to workers with the relevant skills and are hence facing multiple challenges in their business environments. Employees also, have scant little protection and usually do not have the necessary flexibility or skills to adapt to the markets in which they operate. These challenges can be faced, however, we need to embrace technology, and training programs need to be upgraded to equip our employees with the best skills.

The rapid evolution and adoption of technology on a widespread scale and further accelerated by the virus pandemic has led to a pressing need for businesses to adapt. While there is no doubt that the current situation induced by the pandemic is amplifying the adoption of new technologies, advancements in technology were already changing the world, from standards of living of the species to the very nature of work we do. It can be observed that even before the advent of the current pandemic, some features of the state of technological progress aka digital transformation were especially relevant.

The workforce imperatives of automation, digitization, and other similar technological trends are significant, and BPOs will need to invest in and hire for radically different skillsets and capabilities in which digitization could affect their businesses.

Main Workforce Skill related challenges facing business today include:

·      A Significant mismatch between technologies available & skills of the existing workforce

·      How to rapidly access or hire workers with the right skills amidst a challenging business environment

Overcoming these challenges require:

·      Alignment with a digital transformation goals of the organization by redefining individuals’ roles and responsibilities.

·      Adequate investment in training from top to bottom levels; for example, we have initiated large scale programs, remotely delivered, for employees to re-skill themselves in various digital technologies

·      Innovative and online virtual training methodologies which allow self-paced learning and certifications.

·      Incentivize through career growth options linked to self-paced re-skilling by employees.

One finds that one has to adapt to new processes and new tools to stay relevant. To further empower the Digital workforce, organizations need to first redefine individuals’ roles and responsibilities to align them with a transformation goal, which can further help in clarifying the roles and capabilities that the company needs.

We need to have Digital learning as an integral part of growth and career development

With a lot of the focus right now on employees, we have to reskill and redirect the workforce as needed — as one of the keys to delivering digital transformation for an organization.

With changing times, employees should start going back to the blackboard and reskill themselves for the new technologies and domains in their organizations. Success in the current business environment requires both digital-savvy leaders and employees with the required capabilities to make changes happen. We know that there are numerous ways in which companies with successful transformation record are enabling employees to embrace changes, however, two methods stand out.

The first method relates to reinforcing new models of working, methods, and behaviors as well, through formal mechanisms, long proved that it supports the organizational change.

Another is giving the workers a say on where exactly the digitization could and should be adopted. It has been observed that businesses are more likely to succeed when employees have a say in generating their own ideas about where digitization might support. To ensure that workers in key roles play parts in reinforcing change it is essential to empower the workforce. Success, largely, depends on both senior leaders and those employees and other stakeholders who are engaged during the transformation!

Supporting Workforce Amid COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the globe, organizations across all sectors have struggled to stabilize operations and put in place new guidelines to protect the health of their employees while maintaining service to their customers. CORONA pandemic has both immediate and long-lasting implications for how people work and participate in society. Also, it is critical to assess how organizations are creating ways to assure their customer base that service delivery operations will continue with the necessary quality, productivity, security, and compliance aspects in place.

BPOs created resilient, coordinated business continuity plans to reflect the new reality and moved with unprecedented speed: for example, within days, we enabled thousands of workers to work from home, shipping & installing desktops and other enabling infrastructure

Now comes the challenge of making it work as a ‘Business as Usual’ practice. Contemporary BPO operations are now located across a significantly larger geography, in many more locations. Lower levels of direct supervisory control…. but with the same resources to manage

BPOs are dealing with immediate imperatives of support for workforce during these times which include:

·       Looking after the health, safety, and well-being of remote working personnel

·       Reinforce culture and connection with employees

·       Scale an effective remote-working model

·       Ramp up workforce flexibility

New systems of engagement for employees are being put into place. What was once a fringe, nice to have employee monitoring and engagement platform has now suddenly become a critical must-have tool for a geographically and individually dispersed workforce. Collaboration platforms are now driving new levels of supervisory monitoring and coaching efficiency. These platforms and associated practices have been largely derived from consumer technologies to which certain pockets of the world are already addicted. This obviously alleviates the problem of training the already collaboration savvy (e.g. WhatsApp users in their personal lives) users to adapt to very similar-looking technologies now slowly spreading into the enterprise world.

Of course with BPOs being dependent heavily on ‘tribal knowledge’ for achieving efficiencies and economies of scale, this presents a slightly different problem towards taking this knowledge amongst a dispersed workforce. 

Covid -19 and its impact on the Workforce in BPO industry

Global lockdowns have severely disrupted the life of the traditional BPO industry. However, at the same time, it has also been opening new avenues. Will the changes in the Digital workforce management play out the escalating challenges faced by the traditional BPO industry during the COVID-19 global lockdown?

Some of the following notions will be challenged severely over the coming months:

·      A wide belief that one simply can’t move thousands of agents into a work-at-home model without a massive disruption

·      Remote work may not be productive enough

·      Security is a major challenge

·      GIG may not stand as a serious option for the BPO industry.

It was widely believed that one simply can’t move thousands of agents into a work-at-home model without massive disruption. Especially when call volumes in some industries are going through the roof. When COVID hit India, the scramble was on to move workers out of densely packed contact centers to their homes. Stretched managers had even more loaded on their shoulders to make it happen, and quickly. To use a metaphor; BPOs had to deliver an oil and filter change to an engine whilst they were still running... during mid-flight.

Also, prior to 2020, there was a lot of skepticism in some circles about the value of digitization and digital transformation; the rapidness of this change is the key highlight. Pandemic changed things overnight. For example, a certain organization went from 500 odd VPN users to over 9000 in a matter of a couple of weeks. COVID-19 pandemic has made us learn, the hard way, that technology will aide us in fighting any future disasters.

How will these changes play out in the Covid-19 world?

A critical step for BPOs is to develop clear workforce strategies to help determine the digital skills and capabilities that they currently have—and will need—to meet their future goals

Digital driven re-skilling of the Workforce is necessary along with an opportunity for BPOs to conduct an organizational transformation & re-framing of their pre-COVID business model, behaviors & practices. As it turns out, in coming months we will see that to manage and mitigate the impact on their workforces, businesses must see that:

•       Digital technology will improve people’s ability to work from home or anywhere. New Geographies will open for BPOs to source talent from.

•       At many companies’ employees may not commute all the time. It’s widely expected that many will have at least a hybrid virtual component, even when the industry goes back to in-person or “in-office”.

•       Digital has created seismic shifts in the mix of skills required to succeed in the labour market. It has also changed the terms of work, giving rise to work from anywhere, short-term assignments, aiding the rise of GIG economy and its foray into BPO space.

•       Automation and related technologies will help the organization become resilient to future pandemics. Optimizing the processes helps make the operations flexible

We believe that digital transformation, pervasive connectivity, and openness to “try” GIG will be a game-changer for BPO in the coming months and years