The health crisis has brought about many upheavals and has suddenly «propelled us into the future». This situation has revived the imperative need for companies to transform and for employees to continuously train themselves in order to adapt to new work situations while remaining effective.
Remote work, partial unemployment, suspension or even cessation of activity… The consequences of the health crisis have prompted employees to question their career paths, their situation, their professional future, and their training needs. However, according to the 2021 Training and Employment Barometer published by Centre Inffo, The attitude of asset managers towards vocational training remains very positive (see below).
On the HR and training side, the stakes are enormous in helping to secure professional careers in an uncertain context. We must anticipate the transformation of professions and work patterns, but also support employees as they evolve both in their «professional» skills and in their mindset, and in the necessary agility they must demonstrate to adapt to change… and to change!
1. Vocational training: a sure bet for adapting, evolving, or changing careers
Although French asset owners’ confidence in their professional future has deteriorated significantly over the past year (-7 points), the Barometer of training and employment 2021 The January 2021 survey conducted by Centre Inffo (in partnership with the CSA Institute) reveals that 68 % of the 1,600 active employees surveyed remain confident about the future, notably thanks to prospects for career advancement or a career change.
Despite the context, Professional training still enjoys a positive image among the workforce 9 out of 10 consider it an opportunity to improve their professional practice (90 %, +1 point) and a chance to evolve professionally (89 %, +2 points), as well as a necessity to maintain their employability in the labor market (88 %, +4 points).
Continuing education is also a valuable help for those who wish to change careers and switch jobs. According to the aforementioned study, 20 % of the assets are preparing a project for professional reorientation, And among those who don’t have one, a third would still think about it!
For several years and especially since the « Law for the freedom to choose one's professional future »Since September 5, 2018, legislators have been working to facilitate access to training and to streamline and secure career paths. Thus, the personal training account (CPF), the flagship instrument of the training reform, is now better known to French citizens (85 %).
In 2021, employee expectations regarding training remain high: according to the results of the study, Almost half of French assets (48 %) plan to undergo training in 2021.
The proportion increases significantly for people in professional reorientation (86 %), people considering changing jobs (67 %), but also people whose profession is changing very quickly (59 %), especially all the professions related to the digital world.
The top 3 of the most requested training courses are computer science and digital technologies, foreign languages (English is in first place) and... management. As for the latter, with the explosion of teleworking, managers are seeing their challenges drastically altered and must quickly adapt. training in team management remotely without losing sight of either the performance of the company or the well-being of the employees.
2. Continuous training: the challenges for HR in transforming professional skills
In a context where professions and skills are evolving ever faster, the so-called policy of predictive management of employment and skills (GPEC) no longer seems suited to the speed of these transformations today., Competences are at the heart of HR strategies and serve as a benchmark for training and employment policies. Moreover, it is essential that the key competencies essential to the company are clearly identified and developed!
Empowering employees in the development of their skills
According to the study by Centre Inffo mentioned above, 78 % of the French assets (+14 points) consider that It is first and foremost a personal and individual responsibility to create one’s own path and to educate oneself..
Although this statistic is reassuring regarding the awareness of employees regarding their responsibility in their training journey, it remains the case that HR and training departments must do everything possible to foster this awareness and make employees more autonomous in developing their skills.
This involves, in particular, better information, since 55 % of the assets surveyed feel that they are misinformed about vocational training. It is also essential that employees are familiar with the group’s major policies. so that the development of their skills remains consistent with the company’s strategy.
Developing professional skills to serve the company’s strategy
Skills have become the basic reference for training and employment policies, whether they are technical skills related to the job (« hard skills ») or behavioral skills related to the person (« soft skills »However, on the ground, it is observed that The management of skills remains still largely a minority activity in companies, where the logic of professions, positions and qualifications still prevails.
The Report of the Employment and Competence Network (April 2021), commissioned by France Stratégie, it presents, among other things, new practices that enable the emergence and development of key skills in support of the strategic issues of companies.
These skills are first and foremost a resource to enable companies to address the shortage of new skills related to specific emerging needs or new professional practices. Digital skills, for example, are now at the heart of the needs to make companies more visible and more efficient and to bring skills closer to operational practices.
Given the difficulty of recruiting talent to meet these new needs, professional training for employees remains the preferred solution for HR professionals.,whether it is improving existing skills within the context of a profession undergoing a period of change (« upskilling ») or to acquire new skills as part of a change in function (« reskilling ») within the company.
3. Digital and agility: skills that are essential in business today
Digital is now an essential part of life: more than half of the world’s population is already connected to the Internet. It is transforming almost every profession and every sector of activity. According to the European Commission, 90 % of the professions today have a digital component. The digital revolution has also transformed the mindset, work methods and skills towards greater agility.
Agile skills at the service of the accelerated transformation of the company
The digital revolution, accelerated by the health crisis, now requires companies and organizations to quickly deploy new projects and to be reactive and innovative in order to remain competitive. This is what Ability to implement new projects quickly and in a controlled manner which will make the difference in offering innovative products and services and evolving value propositions.
To do this, new Skills related to agility and agile methods are indispensable to help the company transform itself and remain competitive.
According to one study conducted by the Strategic Projects Observatory, According to a more recent study by VersionOne, the success rate of development projects using the classic (cascade) model is on average 14, % compared to 42 % for projects carried out using agile methods. This success rate could even have risen to 53, % according to the study.
Beyond the success of the projects:
- 87 % of the participants in this study claim that applying agile methods would provide them with real benefits in managing the changes in priorities that occur during development.,
- 84 % note a significant improvement in the team’s productivity.
After the development of IT, it is now the entire company that is concerned with implementing more agile work methods, from top management to employees and managers alike. Succeeding in transforming the organization requires, through various initiatives, training in agile methods, To develop the culture of all teams around agile principles and methods, then to support employees in implementing agile and collaborative practices to foster better engagement.
Communication and digital marketing are skills that remain essential for the performance of a company
Communication and marketing They are among the areas that have been most impacted – and have been for a long time – by digital technology, because the digital era requires the rapid and continuous acquisition of a large number of new skills to adapt to the increasingly connected habits of customers. digital skills They are also indispensable today to ensure its employability and secure its future.
Among the results of the’Observatory of the developments in the marketing and communication professions Published in March 2020 by the ISEG in collaboration with Ipsos, three particular figures help to better understand the need for skills in Communication and Digital Marketing:
- 96 % Companies consider that the Marketing/Communication function is facing a major transformation (48 %«very important»),
- 56 % Companies consider digitalization to be the main transformation facing the Marketing/Communication field, followed closely by the use of social networks (52 %),
- …but only 55 % Executives believe that their Marketing/Communication teams are well prepared for the changes in the sector!
It is therefore essential to train the teams, ideally with experts in each subject and participatory pedagogies like the one proposed in our digital marketing certification course.
Since marketing and sales teams are often associated, these responses also reflect the strong need to develop the digital skills of business profiles within companies, regardless of their size, whether in BtoB or BtoC.
In a volatile and uncertain context, where responsiveness is essential, HR and training services face new challenges in identifying, mobilizing, and evolving the professional and relational skills of employees. To this end, continuing education is more important than ever as a strategic tool, both at the individual level to secure the professional career – all the more so if the training is certification- or degree-based – and at the collective level to remain effective despite the crisis and support the strategic evolutions of the company.
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