Why Digital Reskilling Could Power The Post-COVID Workforce
Covid-19 has unleashed immense disruption both to the lives of individuals and to the global economy. Beyond the tragic impact in terms of deaths and hospitalisations, the economic disruption is immense and likely to be long-lasting.
The example of the US shows how incredibly disruptive Covid-19 has been on companies and jobs, with 33.3m new jobless claims since mid-March, compared to 695k at the height of the financial crisis in March 2009.
The impact of lockdown
The lockdown required to curb Covid-19 means that whole swathes of the economy can’t function. While VCs and software developers find working from home unproductive and stressful, for jobs in food service, manufacturing or retail, working from home isn’t an option and the lockdown is likely to lead to significant job losses.
The lockdown will eventually end, hopefully with the emergence of an effective vaccine in the not too distant future, but it’s far from clear that all of the jobs lost as a result of the lockdown will come back. Retailers have been struggling for years and the behavioural shifts that will come form a period of enforced lockdown could endure beyond the time when the lockdown ends, not to mention the risk of falling consumer spend in any Covid-19 linked recession.
The sad truth is that for some (and possibly many) of the people who lose their jobs due to the impact of Covid-19, there is a real risk that there won’t be a job to go back to once the lockdown ends.
The Opportunity
As such, I’d expect lots of workers will be in need of reskilling to help them switch to the new jobs in industries that benefit from the behavioural shifts that Covid-19 brings about. Sectors such as logistics, e-commerce and potentially healthcare are likely to need to expand their workforces to take advantage of increased uptake post Covid-19.
One area I’ll be watching with interest is the emergence of platforms that can re-skill and onboard new workers into these growth industries and help the millions of workers who have been impacted by Covid-19. While they’ll deliver a social good, they will also help workers and employers and so should be able to build valuable businesses.
Online education has seen massive growth over the past decade, with the emergence of massive online-only courses (MOOCs) from the likes of Coursera or EdX as well as digital language learning solutions such as Duolingo or Babbel. However, there is a gap for practical, skills-based vocational training of the sort that will be required. Companies such as Lambda Academy or — Forward Partners portfolio company - Makers probably come closest but are typically focused on white-collar software developer roles rather than the often partially manual roles in the industries above.
In addition, I’d expect digital training solutions to see a boost in uptake due to the Covid-19 lockdown as face-to-face training becomes impractical and workers get used to virtual interactions in other areas of their working lives.
Companies tackling this space will have to think creatively about how they can work with users who aren’t in employment and so are likely to be cost-conscious. It may be that they monetise through recruitment, matching trained workers with open roles (like Makers) or through income share agreements (like Lambda School). It may also be that workers move between jobs more frequently, so an ‘employee passport’ detailing skills and experience across employers could have value.
Skills-focused training
Content for these solutions is likely to be very different from that available on MOOCs with a focus on bitesize training around specific skills. I’d expect that a key competence would be to identify the skill needs that are shared across jobs to maximise overlap and minimise the amount of content that needs to be created for each role. There is also scope to work directly with employers to tailor content to their own needs — increasing the pool of suitable labour to make hiring easier.
In logistics, for example, the post-COVID expansion of e-commerce is likely to exacerbate an already difficult situation with a 2019 report finding that 54% of logistics companies are expecting the skills shortage to increase over the next five years with 42% of firms citing job-specific skills as the main barrier to successful recruitment. Providing access to these job-specific skills would help logistics firms to expand while also helping people from industries in decline back into work.
The Covid-19 lockdown will end eventually and people will be able to go back to work again. However, the jobs available could be quite different and there is scope for businesses that can help workers shift to the jobs that are needed. If you are targeting this space, I’d love to hear from you.
