The 21st Century is filled with technology. It is the increasing prominence of technology that exert influences on many businesses and various other aspects in our society today. In a World Economic Forum report, the skillset deemed essential in today’s 21st Century are curiosity, adaptability, communication and digital literacy to name a few. It is a set of skills that contains a mixture of eternal skills, skills that have been consistently presented throughout the decades, such as communication and collaboration, and one that has only been added to the current 21st century, technological savviness.
It is inevitable to say that technological savviness is what distinguishes past essential skills to today’s must-have 21st century skills in light of this digital world. With digital technology having only been introduced to the world for about a few decades ago, there is an unequal level of tech exposure across people of different generations.
In a multigenerational organization where people have to work together, using shared technology and digital tools to collaborate and deliver the works. Developing the 21st century in-demand skill like the digital skill for instance, is a mission to Learning and Development professionals. It is a mission to make sure all workforces are effectively equipped with this 21st century in-demand technological skill. Specifically, it is a mission to make sure everyone, regardless of their generations, effectively acquired this digital skill across every employee age group.
Organizations with multigenerational workforce face the challenge of unequal familiarity levels of technological usages among their employees. Hence, when it comes to training and developing the digital skills, a one-size-fits-all approach during the developmental session would not deliver the most effective results.
A better approach to close the skill gap, which existed unequally across different generational workforces, is to understand the demographics of the learners. Tailoring the sessions and thoroughly designing the learning sessions to suit each generational group, to ensure effective digital skill acquisition across different employee age groups.
Specifically, a report by Chief of Staff Asia found that Millennials and Gen Z, for examples, increasingly prefer flexibility and work-life balance in the post pandemic world. Making online courses learning and online training, the training option that serves these workforce groups better for instance.
Closing the digital skill gaps among multi generational staff is the key to effective work collaboration in the 21st century digital working climate, with technology being the in-demand skill that plays a part in everyday work functions and businesses.
Read more on digital skills and workforce retention during the resignation crisis.
Request the full report here.
Adapted from source Chief of Staff Asia Learning and Development Report October 2022 Edition.
