Gartner says more than 3 million workers across the world will have a ‘robo boss’ by 2018. High time businesses reorient skill development programs to help mid-level managers stay relevant.
In July, the Vodafone-Idea merger was approved by the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The mega deal will make the shareholders of both companies become part of the largest telecom company in India, and reward them in the future. It will also create a situation that can quickly escalate into a nightmare.
As many as 6,000 senior-level leaders will have overlapping roles in the new entity. Industry sources say at least 50 percent of these will have to be let go and will be “not employable”. These individuals, who have put in at least 20 years of work in various roles within the organisation, have not been trained to keep pace with the digital era. But turning unemployable at the age of 45 is scary.
Nishikant Nigam, EVP & Chief Delivery Officer, at CSS Corp, an IT Services company, says: “In this context, the mid-level management, the future leader/CXOs, in organisations also need to evolve and reinvent as traditional roles and structures come under increasing strain.”
India’s IT workforce comprises roughly 1.4 million mid-level managers, and they are finding themselves at the centre of reskilling and restructuring conversations across organisations.
NASSCOM believes the IT industry’s current reskilling focus is on emerging technologies like Big Data, Analytics, Cloud, IoT, Mobility, and Design Thinking, while also investing in emerging skills like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, DevOps, Robotic Process Automation, and Cybersecurity.
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