Retraining In The Digital Age: Agam Berry, Quantified Commerce

In a recent and shocking prediction, the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2020, 5 million jobs in fields like manufacturing and customer service will be lost. India will not be able to escape this shift towards automation. The country produces 3.8 million cars a year, and BPO (or business process outsourcing) which includes customer service jobs sees millions of educated applicants competing for positions every year. There's an economic revolution taking place, and these sources of employment are not going to remain safe. This means that it is going to be imperative for companies to retrain and re-educate the scores of employees who are going to have their working lives upended by this shift towards an automated and digital age.

If this sounds depressing it's not all that bad. The silver lining is there is no shortage of jobs. In a recent Deloitte survey, 39% of large-company executives said they were either "barely able" or "unable" to find the talent their firms required. This clearly points to a thirst for new workers who are skilled in the new digital technologies that are emerging as the main way companies do business.

Companies are beginning to take note that re-education and retraining are imperative to competing in a new economic world where automation is taking over and digital skills are necessary to thrive. AT&T, the large U.S. phone company, is one example of how companies are retraining employees to compete in this new world. Since 2013, they have spent more than $250 million on employee education and professional development, and provide their workers with more than $30 million in tuition assistance if employees choose to re-enroll in university.


This initiative is beginning to show results. From January to May 2016 employees who had been re-trained filled 50% of all the technology management jobs at the company, and had received 47% of promotions in the technology organization. This isn't just a benefit for the employees, but also for the companies that employ them. AT&T has seen a 40% reduction in their product-development cycle and accelerated their time to revenue by 32%.

But as with anything, there is no pay off if companies and organizations are not forward-thinking, Claudia Crummenerl, head of executive leadership and change at the consultancy Capgemini says, "There are pockets of good… Generally, the focus is very much on the current demand for data scientists and not so much on technologies, such as AI, that are coming up." What she's saying is that if companies aren't progressive in their views towards the automation and need for digital literacy that is looming on the horizon they are going to be left in the cold.

Companies who do look towards the future don't see only the retraining of staff for new digital jobs as a goal, but the restructuring and rethinking of workplace environments and social structures as necessary initiatives to increase productivity, revenue, and success.

Quantified Commerce, a digitally native company is looking to make waves in terms of the retraining and re-education of employees."We found it impossible to find and hire good managers," said Agam Berry, co-founder of Quantified Commerce, "that's why we have our own learning management system, and an entire team devoted solely to creating content and testing people on the content that has been put on to the learning management system."

Berry cites underperforming Indian education as an example of why retraining and educating employees, particularly in India, is so important, "the Indian education has not been able to keep up with the times," said Berry, "we have built programs internally to teach our management and staff how to stay relevant in the digital age, which has machine learning, AI, and automation as a part of everything. Continuing education is extremely important for employees, and for a business to succeed in India, it's absolutely imperative."

AT&T and Quantified Commerce are examples of companies that are looking to buck the trend of automation by retraining and re-educating their employees. This isn't just for the benefit of the company, however, as the re-training of employees has lead to increased job satisfaction and morale, which leads to increased motivation. Re-training and re-education efforts by progressive companies are a win-win for both the company and its employees.

Entering into the digital age is going to present problems, problems that are not going to be solved overnight. It's going to take forward-thinking companies like AT&T and Quantified Commerce to solve those problems.