Upskilling Initiatives By IT Companies in the Age of Industry 4.0

Abstract

As the types of skills required on the labour market shift rapidly, individual employees will need to engage in life-long learning. This is not only to remain employable but to pursue satisfying and rewarding careers that enable them to optimize their job opportunities. Reskilling and upskilling programs would be crucial for businesses if they are to attract the talent they need and lead to socially responsible solutions to the future of jobs. This study has focused to understand the level of awareness the top five Indian IT companies have on Industry 4.0 and what are the practices that they follow to tackle the threat of digitization to their employees. This has been evaluated by studying the learning and development practices, the mission, vision, values of the organization from the homepage of their website and also their annual reports for the year 2018-19. This study would be useful to other organizations in the industry in getting an idea of what are the L&D practices the top five organizations has been doing. The chosen top companies can have a look at the current programs being practised by them and the improvements that can be brought up to upskill and reskill their employees. All organizations chosen for study has been carrying out upskilling or reskilling initiatives along with other learning and development programs. Three organizations have elements of learning inculcated in their core values whereas all five of them have no elements of learning or digitization mentioned in their mission and vision statement.