Reskill & upskill: Tackling the post-COVID HR challenge
The increase in digitisation worldwide has created an urgent need to reskill redundant staff and upgrade skills across the board. This has been brought into sharp focus and accelerated by the significant changes that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on the way we do business.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide lockdowns imposed to contain it, changing technologies and new ways of working were already disrupting jobs and skills. The pandemic has simply made this transition more urgent.
The ongoing fourth industrial revolution (4IR or Industry 4.0) is also using artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine communication (the Internet of Things) and other smart technologies not only to make many human skills redundant but also creating increasing demand for new skill-sets. This is especially relevant for Jordan, where the emphasis on technological skills and the increasing demand for trained personnel is outstripping supply.
Reskilling and upskilling are effective strategies for employers to combat a skills shortage, especially in the post-pandemic era. While upskilling involves teaching employees advanced skills to help them progress along their current career path, reskilling involves teaching them entirely new skills and training them to do a different job.
The World Economic Forum estimates that as much as 54% of all employees globally will require significant reskilling and upskilling by 2022.
One of the quickest businesses to respond to the COVID-19 crisis was Better Business, a Jordanian firm specialised in capacity-building and human capital development for corporations in the Middle East. The company has developed thousands of programmes over the years and enrolled more than 100,000 people in different transformational activities.
COVID-19 forced the company to pivot their business model and move to online training as many contracts were put on hold or cancelled. “It was already part of our plan to transition to online training, but we weren’t in a rush. When COVID hit the world, we took immediate action. Though we lost a big chunk of our business, we were first to market to go online and do free talks during the crisis,” said Abeer Qumsieh, founder and CEO of Better Business.
AGILITY PAYS OFF
Internally, the company’s employees were not well-versed with the latest online developments. So Qumsieh and her team started holding daily meetings to acquaint employees with the latest tools and train them on how to move online. At the same time, she had to keep them going and motivate them during a critical time when everyone was in a state of shock.
“The management team was putting in 12–14 hours a day to upskill themselves and train the staff. We explained to our people that things were changing, and that a gradual digital transformation was no longer an option,” said Qumsieh.
Only one week after the lockdown began in Jordan, Better Business started its transition to digital training and initiated online talks that saw high levels of engagement, not only from clients but also from government. The topics were timely and relevant to the prevailing business environment, focusing on things like how to use Zoom video, leadership in times of crisis, working remotely, and managing stress during a crisis.
The efforts to pivot soon started to pay off, and Better Business entered new partnerships with entities such as the Crown Prince Foundation, which boosted the company’s online presence.
“Our online talks were attended by more than 8,000 people. This increased our customers’ trust and we started converting most of the contracts from offline to online. It took effort and time and was a painful process, especially as training and development is not usually a priority for companies during an economic crisis,” said Qumsieh.
“We had to come up with high-value and engaging products. Some said they never thought online training would be so much fun. One of the secrets of our success is that prior to training, we orient the person so that they’re ready and comfortable, not dreading this new tool that they’ve never used,” she said.
Better Business has now developed a fully functional online learning management system, produced 56 digital training videos, and launched an e-shop where customers can select and pay for their training products online. Being agile has therefore proven to be the most valuable asset for the company, helping it to avoid losses and to even grow during these testing times.
TRAINING FRESH GRADS
For Tamatem, the leading mobile games publisher in the Arab world, reskilling and upskilling of employees has been crucial to the company’s growth. The Jordanian company, established in 2013, partners with mobile game developers from around the world to make them culturally relevant for Arab gamers before publishing them in the Arab market.
Unlike other SMEs that have had to lay off staff during the coronavirus lockdown, Tamatem was hiring. Since March 2020, it has brought on board 25 people, bringing the total number of its employees to 65.
“Gaming flourished during the pandemic. Everyone was sitting at home, playing, and enjoying their time. We had to double down on our investment so we could catch up with all this demand,” said Hussam Hammo, CEO and founder of Tamatem.
This exceptional performance goes back to Tamatem’s talent strategy, which involves developing their team members’ skills and matching workers to new roles and activities.
“Gaming in general is a new industry for the Middle East, so finding anyone with experience in this field has been extremely difficult. From day one, we were relying on fresh graduates whom we could reskill, upskill and build their career path from scratch,” said Hammo.
For nearly 80% of the team, Tamatem is their first job, and most of them came in for a certain role and are now doing something completely different. For example, one of the company’s most brilliant product managers started as a 3D graphic designer, before moving to development, product management, and finally, project management — all in just four years.
“A lot of reskilling has happened. The good thing is that these people are passionate and young, and they’re willing to make these changes.” said Hammo. “Newcomers know they are learning a lot in compensation for the lower salary. Our marketing director, for example, was a fresh graduate when she joined us, and we have helped develop her skills.”
To encourage newcomers to experiment with new roles and nurture more promising skills, Tamatem uses a certain a motivation-based approach.
“We found that the only way that makes sense is to introduce sudden changes and ask people to adapt quickly, rather similar to the way the coronavirus has forced companies and staff to do,” said Hammo. “Rather than telling them ‘in six months, we want you to be doing that’, we go to the person and tell them ‘we need this position to be filled and we think you have the ability to do it. Although you are a designer, based on the skills you have and our observations of you — you’re very organized, you can write amazing documentation, and you have great communication skills — let’s work on developing these skills by assigning you as a product manager from next month, and you need to learn every fast’.”
The employee then feels motivated to prove themselves and appreciates the fact that the company has given them the opportunity to grow. This often comes with a salary or title change if that person has proven to be a fit candidate for that job, noted Hammo.
RESKILLING AN EXISTING TEAM
Finding experienced people who are willing to grow with a new company is a problem that all startups face. For Solfeh, an Amman-based micro-lending platform, this necessitated hiring fresh grads but also retaining the original team to ensure organic growth.
“When you’re a very young company, it’s difficult to attract high-calibre candidates with good experience as executives, because your company is still starting and you’re trying to prove the concept. So we struggled with that for around two years,” said Ali Tabbalat, founder and CEO of Solfeh.
The only people Solfeh could find when it started in 2015 were fresh graduates and people with one or two years of experience.
“After two years, when we started building our brand and having a better financial position and a solid business model in the market, we started to hire more senior people with longer experience,” said Tabbalat.
Only recently, in the last six months, Solfeh hired a chief financial officer with more than 16 years of experience and the company is now looking for a chief operating officer.
“It’s important to retain and reskill at least the people who started with us. They understand the business and the way we operate, and the cost of replacing them is high,” said Tabbalat. Retention and retraining are also important for a company because competition over talent — especially technologists — is fierce in Jordan, making it difficult and costly to hire talented people.
In the last three years, many startups have been developed and several international companies such as Booking.com, Expedia and Amazon have opened offices in Jordan. This is in addition to existing companies that are expanding into the Gulf region or getting more business from outside Jordan.
Jordan has already kickstarted a process to embrace digitisation and position itself as a global technology hub. In May 2019, it established the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, the first of its kind in the region, to develop digital infrastructure, skills, leadership, and financial services and platforms.
According to Tabbalat, the government is investing a great deal into training and recruiting many of its tech university students and fresh graduates. For example, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship encourages companies to recruit fresh tech graduates by paying half their salaries for one year, an incentive that Solfeh uses.
SKILLS IN SHORTAGE
The World Economic Forum has found that the demand for technology competency, especially when it comes to technology design and programming skills, will continue to grow over the next two years. This has been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis.
Additionally, there are several positions that employers in Jordan currently struggle to fill. One of them is digital marketer, a frequently overlooked specialisation because many people think it is easy, according to Hammo.
“People think that by going to Facebook, putting an ad and paying 10 USD for it, they can call themselves digital marketers. But digital marketing is different. It’s about analysing and tracking everything that happens after the spend — doing the right campaigns, the creatives behind them, evaluating their success, managing the ROI on these campaigns and being up-to-date on various digital media channels.”
Other positions that are in high demand but difficult to fill are data analysts and data scientists, which are important for any startup that’s doing something digital or online, said Hammo.
Finally, there is a big opportunity for those who have experience in product management, another skill that is lacking in Jordan. “You will find tonnes of project managers, but you won’t find many product managers who can become mini-CEOs for a product. Knowing what comes in and goes out, having authority and different skills to analyse and put in new features for the product and represent it is something crucial whether in gaming or beyond,” said Hammo.
These positions, according to Hammo, are immediate needs by Jordanian SMEs, and if people are reskilled for such positions, they would be better prepared for the post-COVID job market and the spread of 4IR.
