It is imperative for employers to upskill their talent to thus match industry needs
Neeraj Tandon
A 2018 NASSCOM Report said that India’s IT-BPM industry recently generated revenues of $167 billion and employed more than 4 million people. What this inevitably leads to is more jobs within the Indian IT-BPM industry where there is a continuous need for employing people with greater skills to meet ever-changing industry needs.
Recent NASSCOM estimates have pinned at least 100,000 new jobs that were thus created in 2017-18.
Making matters more complicated, India is also at the forefront of leading global innovations in the digital space due to the country’s digitally literate population and the government’s digital initiatives. In 2018, digital revenues in the Indian domestic market thus increased to more than 18 percent from 14 percent in 2016.
By 2025, this revenue is further poised to increase up to 38 percent. To meet this ever increasing demand for digitally-enabled services and solutions, the industry employs around 4,50,000-500,000 employees. This accounts for about 75 percent of the global digital talent pool, according to NASSCOM.
New technologies are shaping the industry and changing expectations
While there is tremendous demand for digital services from global clients, within India there are various government initiatives that are leading the digital push. Some of these are e-government services, mobile banking, smart cities, digital payments, digital governance, citizen services like Aadhaar card. Further, these and the online transfer of benefits for government schemes are resulting in a larger scale of digital disruption.
Technologies and processes such as cloud, recruitment process outsourcing (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things, analytics, social media and digital marketing are already considered mainstream areas for technology investments.
Additionally, business leaders globally are investing in areas of customer experience design, social and digital anthropology, web psychology, selling business innovation, product and service enhancement, social analytics, channel development and so on. All of these are more likely to shape future opportunities in the digital space and lead to the creation of more jobs.
The essential need for upskilling and reskilling
Against the backdrop of newer technologies that are shaping the outsourcing services industry, it is natural that new skills and new jobs will become commonplace. Gartner estimates that by 2021, 55 percent of technology talent recruiters will require additional skills in areas of business, digital and analytics to realize business innovation and growth.
While businesses and governments constantly embrace newer technologies, employees on the other hand, are seeing this more as an opportunity to enhance their career prospects. By focusing on leveraging core soft and cognitive skills such as complex problem solving, creative thinking, cognitive flexibility among others, they are reskilling and upskilling to make a mark.
The industry is also responding to this change by enabling newer job profiles like robotics specialists, data scientists, machine learning scientists, neuro-implant technicians, programmers and so forth to meet the new and changing business processes.
However, this is also leading to a fear among employees that such digital disruptors could have a displacement effect on their jobs. Among all industries, the BFSI industry is one where the increased adoption of digital technologies such as RPA and AI is a reality and job displacement fears are real. In order to address these fears, it is imperative for employers to upskill their talent to thus match industry needs.
To further support this, technologies such as RPA and AI are also being utilised by employers to augment human efforts in specific jobs. For instance, some tasks are utilising a combination of human and AI skills to make output more measurable and effective.
With such integrations, customer experience (CX) is expected to rise higher thus resulting in positive outcomes and business growth. Employees who have been largely engaged in routine, back office work, will now have an opportunity to enhance and upgrade their skills to perform more complex tasks. In other words, utilising digital technologies has the potential to drive greater employee productivity and increase employee (and customer) satisfaction by leaps and bounds.
Upskilling the workforce is key to stay ahead
In an increasingly competitive job market, where job cuts are a regular occurrence in the Indian IT sector due to under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies, upskilling and reskilling holds the key for a brighter future for workers. In the Indian IT-BPM space, bundled digital deals have become the new norm. Nearly every IT-BPM deal today has some elements of digital components such as CRM, RPA, social, digital marketing or analytics.
Digital preparedness is thus a key differentiator in the market. This change is enforcing significant process re-engineering while demanding relative skills. IT-BPM companies are thus focusing on unique talent management and acquisition strategies that address these challenges and help employees gain new skills to stay relevant and competitive in a complex and changing digital world.
The writer is CEO, Conneqt Business Solutions (A Quess Company)
