Learning and growing on the job

COMPANIES HAVE REALISED THEY CANNOT SIMPLY RECRUIT ALL THE TALENT THEY NEED, AND HAVE TO DEVELOP IT INTERNALLY

An ever changing, highly competitive global landscape necessitates the development of strong, responsive worldclass organisation empowered by its vision, values and vitality. While organisations have consistently tried to foster a culture that rewards continuous learning, collaboration and development to be future-ready, they are still evolving to meet the challenges posed by the ever-changing market realities.

To f ur t her t his agenda, lear ning and development (L&D) leaders need to build the firm’s talent and leadership pipeline and enhance organisational capability to win in the marketplace and create enduring value for all stakeholders.

Faced with gaps in talent and skills, CEOs are turning to chief HR officers (CHROs) and chief learning officers (CLOs) to ask for more and better learning platforms and products.

Given this challenge, corporate L&D has burst onto the scene as one of the top three challenges facing Indian business (Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 2015).

As companies be gin the transformation process, chief learning officers are taking on critical business roles. Having done tremendous work in employee development, change, and leadership, the CLO of today wears many hats: chief capability officer, chief leadership officer, chief talent officer, and even chief culture officer.

In this year’s Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, more than 8 out of 10 (85%) respondents cited learning as “important” or “very important,”— up 25% from last year. Yet, in a troubling development, more companies than ever report they are unprepared to meet this challenge.

The capability gap between the importance of the issue and the ability to respond grew close to 5 times (from 8% in 2014 to 38% in 2015) over the last 12 months.

Senior business l eaders increasingly see shortages of skills as a major impediment to executing their business strategies.

Less than half of the Indian respondents to this year’s survey believe that they are “ready” or “very ready” in the area of workforce capability.

As the economy improves and the market for high-skill talent tightens even further, companies are realising they cannot simply recruit all the talent they need and have to develop it internally.

The authors are senior director and consultant respectively, Deloitte in India