IT and IT services companies in India have stepped up reskilling of employees as they race to grab business in the post-pandemic environment where clients are demanding new digital expertise. Companies such as InfosysNSE -0.66 %, WiproNSE -0.31 %, Accenture, Zensar TechnologiesNSE -0.06 %, among others, have embarked on a massive upskilling drive to make sure their workforce in India is ready for the next-level jobs. The training being imparted is in the fields of cloud technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, cyber security, Internet of Things (IoT), user experience (UX) and digital networking, among others. Infosys, which has around 240,000 employees, has seen a 1.5 times increase in reskilling of workforce in the April-June period compared with the previous quarter. Krishnamurthy Shankar, executive vice president at Infosys, told ET that “the need for reskilling has been exacerbated in the post-Covid scenario with new-age digital skills becoming indispensable” to clients. “A steady focus on reskilling is key, as we progress in our digital transformation, and we are expecting coverage to increase manifold in the upcoming quarters,” he said. Employees at the Bengaluru-headquartered IT major are spending an average 35 minutes each day on in-house learning platform Lex, which offers over 850 micro-courses with advanced telemetry, gamification and certification features. Accenture, which spends about $1 billion every year globally to retrain its people in new technologies, has fast-paced its reskilling efforts as the importance of ‘cloud’ in digital transformation has increased exponentially. Accenture has over 200,000 employees in India across its businesses. “While we are known for our cloud capabilities, we augmented it by launching a program ‘Cloud Elevate’ to prepare for the future with requisite knowledge and hands-on experience on key cloud platforms,” said Mahesh Zurale, senior managing director, lead – Advanced Technology Centers in India, Accenture. Zensar Technologies aims to reskill 90% of its 9,000-strong workforce by the end of the year. “We have taken many initiatives of reskilling and upskilling resources in emerging skills, i.e., cloud technology, digital marketing, analytics, fullstack, automation, cyber security, AI/ML, Agile, DevOps, user experience (UX) and digital networking,” said Vivek Ranjan, CHRO, Zensar Technologies. “Many businesses are moving to cloud to provide reliable services to customers and planning to automate their processes for increasing productivity and saving cost. User experience and data analytics are playing an important role in running businesses efficiently.” Companies are investing in self-learning platforms and research labs for employees to experiment, and boosting technology infrastructure to upscale and build new learning platforms. “Covid-19 has created immediate online and virtual training needs,” said Anurag Seth, vice president at Wipro. “We have made investments in technology infrastructure to upscale virtual instructor-led training, e-learning courses from partners, online assessments platforms, and virtual labs and mentor support,” he said. Over the last couple of years, thousands of workers in the Indian IT industry, one of the top job creators, were laid off, with several roles becoming redundant due to automation and digitisation. Now the Covid-19 pandemic has dealt another blow, forcing many companies to put a freeze on increments and hiring, while some have been in the news for scaling down workforce or opting for performance-based exits. This has made skilling the top priority to avert or reduce redundancies and lay-offs, said industry experts. “The need for more talent with the right skills that can build and service companies has become a business imperative post Covid,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president at IT industry body Nasscom. “The reskilling target that we had set for five years may have to be done in two years now.” Last year, Nasscom had estimated that about 40% of India’s IT workforce would have to be reskilled over the next five years to cope with emerging trends.
