Digital skills - continous learning

Most would agree with the claim that we have a digital talent gap. The speed of technology progress has made most employees' skills less valuable, and many jobs can currently not be filled with the right talent. The gaps grows on all levels, from employees to middle management to top management. The educational system is currently not doing enough to close the gap, it will be up to the individual and the organisation he/she works for to step it up.

On the positive side, there is no lack of courses, arenas or tools to develop the soft and hard digital skills that is needed. You have MOOCs, websites, podcasts, blogs, conferences, start-up labs, TED talks, books, magazines, YouTube channels, social media sites and much more. A challenge might be to navigate this universe, separate good from bad and also link the learning tools to the digital skills needed. But the tools are there.

From my first Coursera MOOC ("Understanding Media by Understanding Google") in 2013 a lot of development has taken place. Many, many more courses and also better quality in the learning platforms. Companies are slowly realizing the potential in this, replacing much of their corporate learning content and structure with online curriculum. Building learning plans for the employees where MOOCs play a central role is a smart move. Millennials are typically concerned to be outdated fast, so they will favor employers who enable and stimulate continuous learning. From the employers side it is expected that digital talent is keeping their skills fresh. The responsibility lies with both parties.

Hard skills like for instance machine learning, analytics, UI/UX, Mobile apps development and cloud computing is in high demand, and it is expected that the gap will grow over the next couple of years. Udacity is a good destination for hard digital skills. But for digital transformation efforts to have real and sustainable effect, soft digital skills are also needed. This could be skills within service design/design thinking, agile, lean startup, collaboration, change management or the topic discussed here; continuous learning. edX and Coursera are some of the leading destinations for that.

I want to close with a few recommendations for how organizations can get going on this.

1. Formulate the future capabilities your organization need to be successful
2. Define digital skills needed to develop and manage these capabilities
3. Map the current level of digital skills and saviness in your workforce
4. Identify courses, arenas and tools that can help close the gap
5. Make a learning- and career plan for each individual employee and leader
6. Formalize, enable and stimulate the learning journey

#digitalskills #coursera #edx #udacity #digitaltalent #learning #digitaltransformation

Yngve leads Digital Transformation | Customer within KPMG Digital in Norway. Follow him on Twitter and Linkedin.