The impact of IoT on skills management

The smart network created by advancements in the Internet of Things is enabling businesses to grow financially.

And the impact it has on skills management is palpable, given how you need the right attributes to drive services and product innovation.
Interestingly, the Gartner Group predicted that the market value of IoT products will reach $1.9 billion by 2020. A number this impressive requires a deep dive into the basis for creating new jobs.
So, here are the 4 ways by which the competencies being managed down the line are affected;

Skills visualization

Some services are best rendered by a human rather than an algorithm, which can allay the concern that every job in the market is at risk of being replaced by smart machines. Considering how automated applications are augmented by the inputs fed into it, there will be an increase in the need for hires who possess soft skills and emotional intellect, besides technical prowess.
Finding skilled resources would require unconditional visibility into the talent pool, which is possible with a resource management software. Besides displaying project allocations across your business, it lets you forecast demand seasonalities. With foresight into surges and lulls in work, you can estimate the effort bandwidth required and source the required quantity and quality of skills beforehand. Teams too, can take an active interest in the kind of professional development they would like to undergo and fit in training hours without the strain of an overload.

Cultural cohesion

As corporations widen their geographical reach, skills will be dispersed more widely across global offices. This ensures that there’ll be seamless communication between teams, encouraging a culture conducive to collaborative work and integrated learning. Managing the workforce is an IoT trend that changes the way we look at the resource pool.
With the on-demand economy booming, more workers are opting to pick up freelance gigs in order to explore their interests. And the cultural cohesion rising out of a mixed resource pool, from full-timers to freelancers, is resulting in businesses benefiting from more work perspectives.
For one, gig workers would have gained prior experience from other projects, which can be used to ideate if you’re stuck on a task-related issue. And for another, with more Internet-friendly workspaces, talent is more reachable than ever, ensuring you can bypass skill shortages with the right cultural fit.

Connected workplaces

IoT is making us reimagine the workplace itself. With more users getting onto multiple devices and companies offering a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, you will know what teams are upto without breathing down their necks. In turn, skilled employees can look forward to working in a familiar and comfortable environment.
The drivers of a smart office include economizing space, energy conservation and process efficiency enablement. IoT can influence workplace design by helping managers decide on ways to optimize the space available, in a manner that accommodates able, and differently-abled employees.
For example, IoT sensors can light up walkways and signs to make it easier to navigate through a building’s entrance and exit points. Measures to make specially-abled workers feel more involved at work lets you tap into a richer world of skills without compromising on the quality of work.

Experiential learning centers

From the academic perspective, IoT is a rigorous discipline making use of technical skills, such as data science, artificial intelligence and programming. Naturally, the kind of skills fueling the future of work determines the revenue generated. Hiring and retaining the right people has everything to do with the relevance of the skills they have.
Investing in workshops, seminars and team-building exercises can go a long way in equipping leaders of the future with the soft skills needed to stay employable. Not only does it help you pick out your successor but also makes their transition to upper management smoother.
By creating an experiential learning center in house, you dial up your own innovativeness while staying cost-effective. You can help your workforce develop and deepen their cognitive ability and situational judgment. The knowledge base is considerably expanded when independent learning adds more to your skills stack.
For one, there’s a rise in hybrid business verticals, meaning that traditional non-technical roles will use a smattering of IoT skills to augment their existing know-how.
And for another, it gives you more options in terms of where transferable skills will be used in job sectors, ensuring you’re taken care of even if the business unit you work in today, is deemed unprofitable and faces closure in the future.

Reporting Insights

An IoT network can help you strategically align organizational resources to the digital roadmap. Considering the amount of data it processes, it's a given that your business intelligence will leverage actionable insights. For instance, the Internet of Things can help you manage skills by rounding up staff according to their location, department, experience, actual and planned availabilities.
It captures your business in its entirety and lets you smooth out workflows. Reports regarding workforce capacity, project demand and utilization levels lets you supply skilled staff to high-visibility, high-return projects in the pipeline. The right kind of data can not only help you measure project success but can also help you determine the skills repository you’ll need to create in order to maximize billable value against the quality of work.
Are you as curious as we are about how much IoT we will see in the future? Let us know in the comments below.