Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy and businesses, but it brought about one crucial change – it called for accelerated technological growth. The pandemic played a huge role in propelling <keyword id="50691" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="digital" source="Orion">digital</keyword> transformation by a few years. And with the onset of transformation, organizations needed to ensure that their businesses ran smoothly and that employees had the necessary skills to move forward in this digital-first era. However, some businesses had been cognisant of the various trends in the tech space even before the pandemic. It helped them not just to stay afloat but innovate their processes. Closely monitoring the trends in AI-ML deployment, the rapid digitalization of the service industry, and the slow and steady movement towards cloud solutions helped them make the shift to the work-from-home (<keyword id="1384155" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="WFH" source="Orion">WFH</keyword>) setup much smoother. But even for these companies, the transformation brought on by COVID meant employees had to re-learn operations — that too quickly. It was in the interest of the companies too to help in <keyword id="3554713" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="upskilling" source="Orion">upskilling</keyword> for a smooth, uninterrupted workflow. <div type="Video" msid="90953148" hostid="261" title="Keeping the edge" dataSource="BUSINESSINSIDER" thumbUrl="https://denmark.timesinternet.in/cmslite/api/app/images.jpg?msid=90953148"></div> For those looking to upskill, <keyword id="1017386" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="coursera" source="Orion">Coursera</keyword> predicts that over the next few months, these skills will be hot and most sought after -- data science, AI &amp; ML, Big Data, Digital marketing &amp; strategy, and process automation. Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in partnership with Coursera

Here’s why it is necessary to upskill the next-gen workforce

Career breaks are supposed to hurt your career. So how is Gen Z getting away with it?Most people are familiar with the scourge of the résumé gap. For decades, job candidates have been trying to avoid handing over a résumé with an extended gap between jobs. The conventional wisdom has long been that companies won't want to hire you if your résumé shows that you have a gap of a few months or years between jobs, so candidates often try to fudge the dates or fill in the gaps with extracurriculars. Hiring managers worry the gaps signify that the candidate's skills have gotten rusty or that they have gaps in their technical know-how, which would mean them taking longer to jump in and get up to speed. But now, after decades of prospective hires fretting over a blank space on their career arc, Gen Z is shifting the power dynamics. Young entrants to the workforce are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-gen-z-is-changing-work-most-pro-labor-generation-2022-11">leading a new conversation about the workplace</a>, and the long-scorned résumé gap is no exception. A survey from the hiring company Applied found that 47% of UK Gen Zers, the oldest of whom are 25, <a href="https://www.beapplied.com/dontmindthecareergap">had taken a career gap</a> of six months or more compared with 33% of workers across the UK as a whole. Based on my interviews, it's clear that Gen Z doesn't think opportunities for personal development should be limited to the more-traditional gap year before or after college, and they don't think companies should be penalizing workers who have chosen to or been forced to take time away from their career. Instead of viewing it as a negative, many Gen Zers are arguing that career breaks are positive and forcing employers to reconsider their preconceived notions about the résumé gap.<h2>The pesky résumé gap</h2>While job candidates have papered over résumé gaps for years, taking a break during the long march of a career is not uncommon. A LinkedIn <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?postID=63a32b159305546f110d4f80&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftalent%2Fblog%2Fproduct-tips%2Flinkedin-members-spotlight-career-breaks-on-profiles%3Fsrc%3Daff-ref%26trk%3Daff-ir_progid.8005_partid.10078_sid._adid.449670%26clickid%3DT8xUEKyjWxyNUeUyAA2hfwWVUkA2JbwyEzPMRo0%26mcid%3D6851962469594763264%26irgwc%3D1">survey</a> found that 62% of workers had taken a gap at some point in their careers. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/sep/05/gap-year-career-break-recession">Research</a> from 2010 found this number had increased fourteenfold since the 1970s. Applied's <a href="https://www.beapplied.com/dontmindthecareergap">survey</a> found that childcare was the most common reason for a career gap: 38% of women and 11% of men said that was the reason for their time away. One in five of all respondents cited mental or physical health as their reason, and just under one-third took a break because of a layoff or to care for a friend or relative. Despite the varied and often noble reasons people have a hole in their CVs, many companies still penalize people for them. Recent <a href="https://www.resumego.net/research/resume-employment-gaps/">research by ResumeGo</a>, a résumé-consulting service, found that applicants with gaps in their CVs were, on average, 45% less likely to get invited to an interview than those without. More than half of the people Applied surveyed said they would feel more confident applying for jobs if they did not have to share a gap with employers. And these biases can have a significant influence on a person's long-term life prospects. A <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/57/1/33/168089/Labor-Force-Participation-Over-the-Life-Course-The">2020 study</a> conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that workers with the most employment gaps experienced up to 40% lower wages later in life compared with workers without gaps. The study also found that women, Black men, those with less education, and those living in poverty by age 22 were the most likely to have résumé gaps — and therefore lower wages — throughout their lives. The bias is acute for young people, who are expected to be putting their noses to the grindstone to make a name for themselves. Brad Thomas, a business manager at the recruitment company Orange Quarter, told me: "If somebody takes time off in their 20s, a lot of employers will still view that time as when they should really be building their career upwards." He said employers might see that person "as someone who doesn't take their career very seriously."This has led to scores of articles instructing people on how to fudge their résumés to cover up gaps, some suggesting applicants "<a href="https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/employment-gaps-on-resume">use a resume style or format that makes the gap less obvious</a>" or "<a href="https://hbr.org/2021/03/how-to-overcome-red-flags-on-your-resume">add some limited contractor or consulting work to beef up your resume</a>." Khyati Sundaram, the CEO of Applied, is leading a campaign that calls on employers to ask for CVs that limit career-gap bias by showing the candidate's tenure in each role, rather than specific dates. She attributed the bias to "a very narrow view of talent that employers have built over the last 70 years." She added: "The needs of organizations are changing, society's changing, and the demands from the younger generations are changing."<h2>Not 'just sitting at home in front of the TV'</h2>Shola West, 22, took a yearlong break at the start of her career and now offers advice to other young people via her <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@allthingsmediasis">TikTok</a> account. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do," West said. Instead of jumping into a career right out of college that she might not like and wasting time and energy, West chose a career gap that gave her the time she needed to research, network, go to events, and understand what she was getting herself into. "My break wasn't just sitting at home in front of the TV — it was me discovering what was right for me," West told me. "That meant trying different courses, trying different training schemes, doing two-week internships, speaking to people in the industry, speaking to family and friends. I was constantly thinking about what it was I wanted to do and upskilling myself to put myself in the best position so that when I did apply for jobs, I had enough to show and prove my skills." Other young people are taking a similar path and exploring career options before jumping into the workforce. Sundaram told me that 70% of young workers in the Applied survey said they believed a three-year break after college before joining the workforce would set them up better, not worse, for a job.And there are many benefits to these kinds of gaps: In a <a href="https://news.linkedin.com/2022/march/new-way-to-represent-career-breaks-on-linkedin">LinkedIn survey</a>, 69% of people who took a break from their career said their time away helped them gain perspective, and 68% said taking a break positively influenced their well-being. Thomas, the recruitment manager, echoed that sentiment: "Taking time out of work can allow someone to gain practical experience and skills that can end up helping their career in the long run. It may even encourage a pivot to an entirely new industry."West told me that a career gap didn't mean just "a break from a job" — it could mean "the start of building content on TikTok or the start of upskilling yourself in another career." She told me: "Our generation is not afraid to take risks and do what we need to do. Sometimes it might not make sense to other generations, but we understand where we want to go and are willing to take risks to get there."This attitude shift may be starting to catch on. Since the pandemic started, more employers are realizing that long absences from work don't necessarily mean a candidate is lacking skills or qualifications. In LinkedIn <a href="https://blog.linkedin.com/2021/april/12/a-better-way-to-address-career-gaps">data</a> from 2021, 79% of hiring managers said they would hire a candidate with a gap on their résumé. But as the economy gets weaker, and the job market gets more uncertain, it's unclear whether this openness to candidates with résumé gaps will be the start of a new paradigm or just a COVID-era blip.<h2>A new attitude toward work</h2>At the core of Gen Z's willingness to take breaks from their careers is a shift in how they see the nature of work. The distaste for career gaps relies on the assumption, widely espoused by older generations, that we should fit life around work, rather than work around life. This perspective is a vestige of the way the world worked in past decades, but it's not the reality of the world we live in now, where workers <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-gen-z-is-changing-work-most-pro-labor-generation-2022-11">confidently stand up against employers</a> who want to grind them down. "There's a clear disconnect between what the employers value and the new generation," Sundaram told me.When Jack Riley, 22, graduated from college in 2020, he already had a job lined up as a resort-manager trainee in Florida. But the pandemic quickly disrupted those plans and left him stranded with few job options. After two years of dead-end jobs, he quit and decided to travel across Europe for five months."I wasn't a huge fan of my job. I knew I wanted to do sales, but I didn't like what I was selling," Riley told me. "I had savings so thought, 'Why not?' Everyone talks about traveling young, but most people don't because they are afraid of the consequences." Riley is now back from Europe and has had to take a seasonal job at UPS because not many people are hiring for full-time positions this close to Christmas, but he isn't worried about how the time away from work will affect his career. "If there is a boss that doesn't get why I did it, I wouldn't want to work for them anyway," he said.Like Riley, other members of Gen Z are coming into the workplace with strong ideas about the role of work in their lives. Surveys have found that Gen Z is <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/job-seekers-survey-august-2021/">more likely than other generations to quit</a> if they are unsatisfied at work, that Gen Z spends <a href="https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/how-long-should-you-stay-in-a-job">less time</a> in a role than millennials, and that 74% of millennial and Gen Z employees report they are "likely to quit within the next year" over a lack of skill-development opportunities. And it often pays off: Young job hoppers who nabbed a new role last year got nearly a 30% raise on average, the <a href="https://business.bofa.com/content/dam/flagship/bank-of-america-institute/economic-insights/who-is-benefiting-from-the-us-labor-market-may-2022.pdf">Bank of America Institute</a> found. For Gen Z, the state of the economy and labor market is very different from what their parents and grandparents encountered. "Older generations were thrown straight into the workforce, and few had the opportunity or desire to take time out of work," Riley said. "They had responsibilities like getting married a lot younger — young people now are getting married a lot later and learning to live their lives before settling down in life and in a career. I don't think older generations get it because they didn't have the choice to." And where older generations had the promise of an easy retirement waiting for them at the end of their careers, a time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor, most young people won't be able to retire until much later in life, a <a href="https://www.trustnet.com/news/13334125/millennials-and-gen-z-will-have-to-wait-longer-for-retirement-study-finds">new study by Evelyn Partners</a> found. For those looking at working well into their 70s, a career gap, or two, simply makes sense. By 2025, Gen Z workers will make up an estimated <a href="https://mccrindle.com.au/article/topic/generation-z/gen-z-and-gen-alpha-infographic-update/">27% of the workforce</a>, and if employers want to tap into this talent pool, they'll need to pay attention to young workers' preferences. As Sundaram summed up, "We need to be more objective about what a person brings, rather than simply judging a candidate off a piece of paper."<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/eve-upton-clark" rel="">Eve Upton-Clark</a> is a features writer covering culture and society.

Gen Z is taking long breaks from their careers &mdash; and getting away with it

<ul><li>Indian education system might need an overhaul as it needs to cover more students, add infrastructure and most of all — improve the quality of education.</li><li>In the union budget 2019, Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman allocated ₹94,800 crore towards the education fund.</li><li>As of July 2019, 1.5 million people gained skills and jobs too, all due to the country’s Skill India mission.</li><li>The country has roughly 8.5 million teachers and only 19,000 teacher training institutes. </li></ul>Indian education system might need an overhaul as it needs to cover more students, add infrastructure and most of all — improve the quality of education. It might have to do all this on a threadbare budget. Though the country’s education budget has improved over the years, it is not enough to match its needs. According to the government think tank Niti Aayog, India should increase the <keyword id="4265028" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Education-expenditure">education expenditure</keyword> to nearly 6% of the GDP over the next three years — which is 4.6% of GDP as of now. In the union budget 2019, Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman allocated ₹94,800 crore towards the education fund — focusing on improving schools and higher education programmes. This was an increase of ₹9.8 crore compared to that of the previous year. 
 
 null





 Quality of education Poor quality of education is one of the many risks that India faces — adding to its unemployment crisis. India ranks third in terms of education score of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Amongst South Asian countries, India has the second-lowest score in education quality, ahead only of Afghanistan. The higher education budget allocated for prominent institutions including Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) saw a drop in the previous years. However the advent of digital technologies has given rise to upskilling practices, which calls for government aid as they add more skills to match the digital world needs. "The government should provide some support in the form of incentivizing companies investing in the reskilling, upskilling of their workforce for the digital age. With the shortage of skilled workforce in the deep tech sector, reskilling of employees in AI, ML, IoT will help grow India's IT sector and sharpen its competitive edge amidst the changing business landscape," Kamal Dutta, MD, Skillsoft told Business Insider. Skill development initiatives As of July 2019, 1.5 million people gained skills and jobs too, all due to the country’s Skill India mission. Yet, this number accounts for only 21% of the total trainees — 7.2 million — who enrolled for the programme. "India’s unemployment challenge is partly because of a low level of education, high dropout rates, labour market asymmetries, a mismatch between the supply of skills and demand and the high aspirations of young people," K P Krishnan, former secretary of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, <a href="https://www.indiaspend.com/skills-and-jobs-must-match-to-meet-high-aspirations-of-indias-young/">told</a> IndiaSpend. The total employment in the country declined by 9 million in the last seven years, since 2017. 
 
 null





 The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is yet another scheme which aims to impart employability skills. The PMKVY 2.0 — which targets to train 10 million people by 2020 — has placed merely 1.2 million candidates so far. The government presently has over 5.2 million candidates registered with the scheme. "Lack of skills was evident in new age digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing. Shortage of these skill sets can be met by the government developing guidelines for various industries in order to create mandatory learning hours for employees — especially in the key growth sectors like IT, BFSI sectors," Dutta added. Last year, Sitharaman announced a 'Study in India' programme, focussed to bring foreign students to study in India’s higher education institutions. She also said that the government will also ensure industry relevant skill training for 10 million youth in India — building skills in technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Virtual Reality, 3D printing and Robotics. This too might see some allocation this budget. Research funds In July 2019, the government said that it will now assimilate grants given by independent ministries and integrate the funds to the National Research Foundation (NRF) — to accelerate the growth of research studies in the country. However, it said that it will identify the trust areas of ‘national importance’ for the allocation of the funds. "Large Free Trade Zones would need to be set up to create India’s Silicon Valley. Given our cost structure India could lead in R&amp;D development that would complete the cycle from education to job creation," said Nitish Jain, President, SP Jain School of Global Management. Teacher training programmes and tax free education India is short of teachers and skilled teachers are rarer to come by. As of now, the country has roughly 8.5 million teachers and only 19,000 teacher training institutes. "If we are focussed on the right to education, the quality of education is equally important and the Govt may look to allocate budget to improve education facilities," Nivedita Das Gupta, India Country Head, Miracle Foundation India. As of 2018, the country’s national capital Delhi government schools were recorded with 35,034 regular teachers. While the sanctioned strength was 64,096 — which is a shortage of nearly <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/teacher-shortage-govt-schools-1414146-2018-12-21">45% of teachers.</a> Last year in August, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) announced an initiative ‘<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/hrd-ministry-to-launch-programme-to-train-over-42-lakh-teachers-across-india-on-august-22-4345371.html">NISHTHA</a>’ — National Initiative on School Teachers Head Holistic Advancement — to train over 4.2 million teachers across the country. "We expect the Government of India to work towards education policies, and help incremental changes within the engineering and IT sector by supporting organizations to bring about this change," said Narayan Mahadevan, Founder, BridgeLabz.

The rise in budget allocation for education is just not enough

For Indian IT professionals who have been planning to go UK for a job or have been posted there through their Indian companies, things aren’t going to be easy now onwards as the UK government, in an attempt to lessen the number of immigrants, has announced some changes in its visa policy for non-EU nationals. 
 According to the new rules announced by the <keyword id="160935" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="UK-Home-Office">UK Home Office</keyword>, minimum salary threshold of 30,000 pounds is to be met by anyone who is applying after November 24th under the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (<keyword id="70733" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="ICT">ICT</keyword>) category. Earlier, the minimum salary limit was 20,800 pounds. 
 "The first of two phases of changes to Tier 2, announced by the government in March following a review by the <keyword id="3811210" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="independent-migration-advisory-committee">Independent Migration Advisory Committee</keyword>, will affect applications made on or after November 24 unless stated otherwise," a UK <keyword id="107407" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Home-Office">Home Office</keyword> statement said. 
 According to UK’s <keyword id="144070" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Migration-Advisory-Committee">Migration Advisory Committee</keyword> (<keyword id="62949" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="MaC">MAC</keyword>), 90% of the visas issued under ICT were that of Indian IT workers. 
 
The other changes announced included the increase of the Tier 2 salary threshold for experience workers to 25,000 pounds, reduction of Tier 2 graduate trainee salary limit to 23,000 pounds, increment of 20 vacancies per company annually and closing of the Tier 2 skill transfer sub category. Many changes regarding the Tier 4 category were also announced and mainly included maintenance requirements for the Doctorate Extension Scheme. 
 These new requirements will affect nationals outside the <keyword id="6355110" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="European-Union">European Union</keyword>, including Indians, the most, when applying for settlement for family members after two and a half years in the UK on a five-year route to residency settlement in the UK. 
 
The changes follow advice by the MAC earlier this year to curb the Tier 2 ICT route and reduce reliance on foreign workers. 
 
"(Immigration) is not serving to increase the incentive to employers to train and upskill the UK workforce. Ready access to a pool of skilled IT professionals in India is an example of this," the MAC report had said in its findings. 
 
"We did not see any substantive evidence of long-standing reciprocal arrangements whereby UK staffs are given the opportunity to gain skills, training and experience from working in India," it noted. 
 
MAC also added that the MNCs with presence in India have developed a delivery model, and has developed a competitive advantage in delivering IT projects in the UK. 
 
"They have developed a delivery model, whereby significant elements of projects are delivered offshore in India, taking advantage of the fact that Indian salaries are lower than in the UK for equivalent workers. 
 
The new rules follow further tightening of the Tier 2 category, which came into force in April this year. 
 "The UK government s reforms to Tier 2 work visas are intended to ensure that businesses are able to attract the skilled people they need, but also see that they get far better at recruiting and training UK workers first," then UK Immigration minister <keyword id="3332922" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="James-Brokenshire">James Brokenshire</keyword> had said. 
(image: Indiatimes)

It’s going to be a lot tougher to get UK Visas for Indians, especially techies now on

The world is undergoing an exponential and rapid change at virtually every level and there are several megatrends at work that are altering life as we know it. 
 These trends span micro and macroeconomics, politics, science and <keyword id="6355118" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="technology">technology</keyword> thus creating a big impact on individuals, organizations, society and governments. 
 
Leaving no area untouched, these megatrends are creating upheavals in the learning sphere, which is under compulsion to evolve in order to align itself with the future of work. 
 
Learning and education have become crucial pillars that nations are now banking upon to survive and thrive. Singapore’s work on making people skills as a differentiator and the many strides made by Scandinavian countries on skilling and repurposing are well documented. Learning has become synonymous with skills and talent development and countries that have invested in learning and in building knowledge societies can expect to enjoy a rosier future. There have been many voices on the urgency for nations like India to invest in skilling and development to realize the fruits of their demographic dividend. 
 
In recent years, however, as digital technology pervades the world, the manner in which learning happens is undergoing a tectonic paradigm shift as well. New methodologies, platforms and technological tools are coming up. These make learning more flexible, accessible and affordable. 
 These megatrends require individuals, organizations, society, the community and governments to delve into the <keyword id="4328142" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="future-of-learning">future of learning</keyword>, anticipate the shape of things to come and prepare for the future. 
 
In my view, the future of learning will be defined by three important megatrends. 
 
The 100 year life! 
Yes, longevity will be a primary trend. A hundred year life is expected to become reality for a growing population across the globe. According to a recent research, 50 percent of the babies born after 2007 in G-7/OECD countries are expected to live to more than 100 years! 
 
While this grand extension of life is good news, it will also throw up immense challenges for the healthier nations, as they grapple with issues related to their aging populations. Countries that are now “retiring” citizens at the age of 58-60 years, will have to find new ways of keeping them up-and-about, productive and “employed” in some kind of activity or another as they continue into their 70s and 80s. 
 
Individuals who believed that investing in about 20 years of learning, at one stretch through school and university, hoping that this would see them through for the next 40 years, will have to do a rethink to survive until their 100s. They will have to plan for the next 35 years, post their typical retirement age of 65. 
 
In order for all generations to have longer productive careers and contribute to society in the sunset years of their lives, they will require to be constantly reskilled/upskilled. They will have to learn and unlearn, handle multiple transitions and basically stay abreast of the developments taking place in the realm of work. Most importantly, they will have to embrace lifelong, or continuous learning in order to stay relevant until they finally call it a day. 
 
Corporations in fact, will have to go beyond training people on just knowledge and skills but also on the transformational capabilities so that they can make transitions. HR in enterprises will have to gear up to deal with the challenge of managing such an eclectic group of workers. 
 
As far as governments are concerned, they will have to step in with regulations that protect the rights of workers, (especially those with ‘flexible’ work profiles). Policy makers will have to worry about unemployment, especially among older citizens. An individual may move swiftly across modes like being a trainee, intern, employee, business owner or simply on a reskilling break. 
 
 
Transformation through technology 
The second important trend that is likely to impact the future of learning is technology, which is evolving at an extremely rapid pace and causing disruption. Going forward, we can expect to see an invasion of Intelligent, Digital and Virtual technologies that will have a massive transformational impact on education and skilling as we know it. 
 Here we are talking about the latest buzzwords including Applied Artificial Intelligence (<keyword id="6355999" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="AI">AI</keyword>), Advanced Machine Learning (read that as Neural networks and Natural Language Processing), Intelligent Applications (AI-powered Virtual Personal Assistants and immersive, conversational and continuous interfaces) and intelligent machines such as robots, drones and Autonomous Vehicles. 
 
Robots too will exhibit a lot of potential in learning. Intelligent machines have already overturned conventional notions that machines are only good for black and white thinking and that they cannot handle fuzziness. As for Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, these technologies are expected to be central to what is going to happen to learning going forward. 
Just as was the case with office Productivity software in the 90s, the Internet and Social media in the last decade, competence in the next level of more advanced technologies will soon become the norm for different age groups. 
 
Additionally, the generations ahead will need to learn to interact, collaborate (work as symbiotic teams) and integrate with co-workers who are not necessarily human! 
 
The rise of the Exponential Organization 
The third dimension in the future of learning will be the new kind of Enterprise, or what is being referred to as the Exponential Organization. Author Salim Ismail in his book called ‘Exponential Organizations’ describes them as companies that are learning to adapt and thrive in a world of abundance by diving into new structures that leverage exponential technologies and a shifting global business mindset. Typically, these companies are 10 times more impactful in terms of speed, efficiency and productivity owing to their adoption of new organizational techniques and their utilization of network technologies. 
 
An important characteristic of these organizations will be their workforce, which will encompass few highly empowered employees, intelligent bots, and expert staff on demand. 
 
Learning Science to rescue 
One challenge that organizations and their world of work will face, will in fact revolve around the co-existence of bots and humans on their turfs. The fact is that Machine Learning systems gather knowledge rapidly at a mind boggling pace, quite unlike humans. The difference between Machine and Human learning is quite stark. Not too long from now Machine Intelligence will become relatively stronger than Human Intelligence and this gap will only get wider and wider. It is crystal clear that that the learning community will have to bridge this chasm. The community will have to work on strategies centered around Learning Science. The focus will need to be on making humans learn much faster – for example, we need to ask the question, ‘Can we compress in one year, what would typically take decades’? 
 
Investments in Learning Science will have to go up, and organizations will additionally need to focus on Engagement Science, Design Thinking and AI/Machine Learning. They will also have to ensure that learning remains real time and long term. 
 
Learning, therefore, as we go forward, will remain on a gallop. It will become more advanced, tech-led and ubiquitous, becoming available to a diverse workforce within milliseconds, and on devices as handy and easy-to-use as their smart phones. 
 
With all this change taking place, individuals, companies and governments will all have to take greater responsibility for learning and knowledge strategies. 
 
I see three key responses that will emerge to address the challenges posed by these megatrends. 
 
• Firstly, there will emerge a framework and model for Human Life-Long Competency Assurance, similar to the model of medical or healthcare insurance. Governments, Companies and Individuals will invest in “insuring” the continued competence of their citizens, employees and selves respectively. Some governments are already debating adding lifelong competency assurance into the social security coverage of their citizens. 
 
• Secondly, there will emerge the concept of a Human Real-Time Competency Index for every individual which can accurately measure &amp; report the competency of each individual in real time using real time big data (almost like a Fitbit reports today on one’s health index), and understand where they stand in the roles that they are meant to perform. 
 
• Finally, the current traditional offline &amp; online learning models will be replaced entirely by Multi-Sensory Real-Time Training Simulators, where live feeds from the world of work for every role, as well as access to the entire historical repository of past knowledge and past transaction big data, will feed into a set of purpose built training simulators for every role, that run in a closed loop system using big data and machine learning, thereby delivering learning outcomes at many orders of magnitude better than today. 
 
The future of learning is at a critical juncture, with megatrends such as 100 year life span, transformation through technology and rise of exponential organizations shaping the entire ecosystem. It is for mankind to embrace the necessary changes to realize massive and possible gains by riding on these defining developments. 
 
(The article is authored by Rahul Patwardhan, CEO, NIIT Ltd)

You Searched For "upskilling trainees" and got 5 results

Here’s why it is necessary to upskill the next-gen workforce

Insider Studios

Gen Z is taking long breaks from their careers and getting away with it

Eve Upton-Clark

The rise in budget allocation for education is just not enough

Prerna Sindwani

It’s going to be a lot tougher to get UK Visas for Indians, especially techies now on

BI India Bureau

Megatrends that will shape the future of learning

Guest Author

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides