Vijay Garg
How many of you waking up only to grab your phone and switch on Facebook to check news-feed to see what you’re missing while you’re sleeping? The advancement of technology has allowed us to constantly connect with rest of the world and stay updated with the current trends, news, and other parts of our social life. Now, let’s put same idea to your digital and marketing knowledge. Shouldn’t they also be checked regularly?
Digital literacy is the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate, and create information using a range of digital technologies. Like it or not, the reality today is that digital market and social media ecosystem would only become more crowded and more competitive. Every marketer knows that digital world is a constant and fast-paced changing environment. As such digital marketing is never going to be a set-it and forget-it solution. What you knew working today might not be relevant tomorrow. That’s why digital marketing needs constant attention and regular maintenance, including fresh knowledge.
Report showed that the demand for technological skills will only keep increasing from 2016 to 2030. Companies and talent developers are well aware of this and hence, are putting employee development as their priorities. As businesses are getting digitized at a faster rate, up skilling employees regularly is important to avoid a gap between skills and needs of the companies. 54 per cent of companies acknowledged that digital talent gap is hampering their digital transformation programs and that their organization has lost competitive advantage because of a shortage of digital talent.
Up-skilling employees, who already fit with your brand and culture, allow them to keep up with industry advancements while putting their skills back into your company. Employee turnover is costly for companies. Employees are in a way your brand advocates. Up skilling is a great way to engage them and let them know that the company cares for their well-beings. Happy employees will lead to better customer service and satisfied customers.
With the development of mobile technology nowadays, you can give your employees the choice of learning on any mobile devices at any time as per their convenience. As such, your employees have access to seamless training content while also having the option to seek performance support at specific time when needed. You can also invest in online learning platforms to give your employees full learning flexibility at a time and place that is best for them.
Learning new skills shouldn’t be boring. Companies can spice up the process using creative games and rewards. Gamification has long noted as an effective tool to motivate learners in a healthy and competitive way. It’s also good to encourage your employees to put their newly acquired skills into practice and to acknowledge their achievements. Up skilling your knowledge shouldn’t be an extracurricular activity. So make sure it’s engraved in your company’s culture. You can set aside time during the workweek for your employees to focus on refining their skills, design a room in the office specifically for training classes, setting up workshops, releasing short tutorial videos, holding seminars, etc. to encourage continuous learning culture in your company. With so much digital disruption happening today, up skilling is more important than ever now for the success of organizations.