Synopsis of the workshop on Employ ability of 21st Century for Success

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Synopsis of the workshop on Employ ability of 21st Century for Success

The intended learning outcome of the workshop on ‘Employability Skills’ was following parameters:

  1. Understand the importance of skills/competencies in 21st century and be what employers look for in employees,
  2. Identify which skills you have and how to give its evidence,
  3. Identify strategies and resources for enhancing and developing skills you want to develop.

In 21st century, technology has converted the world to a global village. Practically all the information and everybody is now just a click away. This has brought in following two major changes in which work is carried out these days:

  1. 21st Century has become the century of self promotion,
  2. Work is no more the place you go to; work is the thing you do!

Positive Attitude, Communication and interpersonal skills have become the highly desirable attributes by all employers. In fact as per a research carried out by Harvard University, interpersonal skills contribute 85% towards our professional success. Contribution of our technical skills is only 15% towards our professional success. Stanford Research Institute further corroborates this finding and states that share of soft skills in our progress is 87.5%.

In addition, Critical, Thinking Media, Literacy, Communication Skills, Information Literacy, Collaboration and Creativity have become other critical attributes to be successful in 21st century.

In addition in future the working is going to change even more.  Four major changes will take place in the working arena: In future work will be

  1. Transparent,
  2. Flat,
  3. Competitive,
  4. On demand
  1. The work will be transparent: Now time and task tracking tools track productivity in real time. Hence contribution of every single individual towards the overall objective of the organization can be measured in the go. Hence more productive a person is; more money he/she will make.  Besides, it will not be possible to hide anything as it will be possible to cross verify any information/data from multiple sources in real time.
  1. The work (organizations) will be flat:

Because of advances in information technology, it has become possible for a person at any level in an organization to interact   with anybody at any geographical location. Hierarchies have broken and organizations have become flat. In fact many organizations allow their employees to work from home and many other have adopted flexi working hours. In future location will become irrelevant. It will be possible to hire employees from anywhere in the world.  And they will be working from any place of their choice.

 

  1. The work will become more competitive:

It has now become common place to hire vendors and temporary experts from anywhere in the world. Hence choice for vendors/employees is not limited to any geographical location. It is now common place for work teams to resemble movie production teams in which several people having diverse skills collaborate to make a movie. They all go their different ways once the movie is made. Innovation rather than location will be the key word in future relationships between employees and employers.

  1. The work will be ON DEMAND:

In future people having specific skills and expertise rather than degrees will be more in demand. Knowledge and not formal qualification will be the key factor in hiring a person. Hence informal education will become more and more important. As every type of information and education is available on net virtually free, not having proper knowledge will not be acceptable. Hence those having experience and skills   in a particular field will be more in demand as compared to people just having formal qualification.

Hence in future employers will have greater access to employees across the globe. Same way even employees will have much greater choice. Most importantly, in future the earning will be linked to the merit and experience and not to geographical location or qualification.

In short 21st century worker will:

. . will use technologies that haven’t  been invented to do jobs that don’t exist at present,

. . will be networked,

. . will be multi-tasker,

. . will be digitally literate,

. . will crave interactivity,

. . will have strong visual-spatial skills,

. . will be tethered to the internet,

. . will want to learn things that matter,

. . will want to be challenged to reach own conclusions.

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