Top IT Companies in India Have Begun Massive Upskilling Drive For Employees - Report! 

Amid the work from home crisis, IT and IT services companies in India have decided reskilling of employees as they race to grab business in the post-pandemic environment. This sudden race has been initiated because clients are demanding new digital expertise.

Companies such as Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Zensar Technologies are among others, who have begun on a massive upskilling drive for employees to make sure their workforce in India is ready for the next-level jobs.

As per an Economic Times report, the training for upskilling will be imparted 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.

Explaining about the company and its structure- IT major Infosys, which has around 2,40,000 employees, seen a 1.5 times increase in reskilling of workforce in the April-June 2020 period when compared with the previous quarter. 

Krishnamurthy Shankar, executive vice president at Infosys, said “the need for reskilling has been exacerbated in the post-Covid scenario with new-age digital skills becoming indispensable. 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.

Currently, employees at Infosys 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, ET further reports. 

Coming to Accenture- this top firm spends about $1 billion every year globally to retrain its people in new technologies. Accenture has also over 2,00,000 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.

Highlighting about Zensar Technologies, it aims to reskill 90 percent of its 9,000-strong workforce by the end of 2020. “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," Ranjan added.  

Finally when learning about Wipro, Anurag Seth, vice president says, companies are currently investing in self-learning platforms and research labs for employees to experiment. So that it can boost technology infrastructure to upscale and build new learning platforms. 

“Covid-19 has created immediate online and virtual training needs. 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," said Anurag Seth. 

Since years, IT employees have been facing layoffs for different reason and now with the pandemic another blow is seen. “The need for more talent with the right skills that can build and service companies has become a business imperative post Covid. The reskilling target that we had set for five years may have to be done in two years now," said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president at IT industry body Nasscom.