Over the past decade, workforce skilling has become one of the topmost priorities for CEOs, which historically ranked amongst the bottom-most activities. This has led CHROs to revisit the L&D function as a whole and rethink the strategy.

Organizational learning has always been a much-debated area of business in terms of ROI, but global businesses are fast realizing the necessity of workforce skilling in a fast-changing and dynamic business environment. Packed with actionable insights, the research report makes a compelling case for why CHROs need to accelerate their investment in continuous learning and learning technologies to advance talent development across the business.

Here are some key questions addressed in the report:

1. Should corporations take the responsibility of reskilling employees and prioritize their development in times of crisis?
2. What are the current barriers to effective L&D with respect to the distributed workforce (especially brought about suddenly by COVID-19)?
3. Why technology is a table stake when it comes to creating an impactful learning culture in times of crisis?
4. How can organizations future-proof employees for the new world of work - today?

Speaking about the challenges with learning technology, Amit Gautam, CEO of UpideLMS, says, "Learning technology has been evolving in leaps and bounds over the last decade. The LMS, in particular, has grown from a rudimentary, clunky system that was largely admin-driven to an AI-powered learner-first platform that enables continuous learning in the flow of work. However, the rate of adoption has been rather sluggish owing to the speed to respond to changing user behavior, the organization culture, and prioritizing of people's development agenda in the Indian workplace.
But that is changing now, too, as the digital transformation brought about by COVID-19 has compelled organizations to embrace learning technologies in all forms and types without an exception, while on the other side of the table, it prodded learn-tech providers to up their game and expand their offerings and product features."

The report goes a step further and also tackles challenges of future disruption, and why investment in skilling is a must have through case studies from successful companies, including Dr. Reddy's, UST Global, and Wipro.

"The disruption came on two fronts. In the blink of an eyelid, the in-person programs we used to run for immersive learning became an impossibility. A quick redesign of the programs to adapt to the "virtual working" - and hence virtual learning - was the first challenge we had to face. The second challenge arose out of the overall climate of uncertainty that suddenly descended on the organization as a whole. How to keep the learning going when everything else was "locked down" was the question we had to grapple with," according to Dr. Madana Kumar, Vice President & Global Head - Leadership Development, UST Global.