NEW DELHI: As chairman and senior managing director at control consulting firm Accenture in India, Rekha M. Menon facilitates clients navigate the disruption caused by modifications in a generation. Her consciousness is on digital strategies and she wants the company to be referred to as the innovation partner for its clients. In an interview, Menon talks approximately how shrewd technologies are reshaping the demand for obligations, capabilities, and jobs and the way groups want a brand new method to getting to know for you to reap the growth promised by means of new technologies. Edited excerpts:
How do you observe new technologies like AI will reshape the demand for abilities and jobs?
It’s already reshaping it, fairly dramatically, it’s beyond and no longer simply AI. One, there are numerous new activity roles emerging which weren’t there before and emerging at a totally fast pace. In truth, we co-led a look at with Nasscom, just in our industry, we stated that there can be a hundred and fifty five-plus new capabilities and 66-plus new task roles. Similarly, what’s going on in every enterprise which you see. Two years ago, you didn’t have drone operators, proper? That’s a new acting role or a social media manager to your personal industry (journalism) which wasn’t there and is a new role that has emerged. Therefore, what technology is doing is creating the want for brand new abilities. The job itself may not have changed. For example, a healthcare provider or a nurse, however as his or her want for administrative obligations disappears due to the fact that’s got automatic, then he or she has to build on one of a kind skills like greater empathy, more time for the patients, and so on. And that’s the second one thing that is happening.
The 0.33 element this is occurring is we need human plus gadget capabilities, due to the fact we ought to learn to paintings with the machines. Therefore, that calls for very extraordinary abilities. For example, when you cross onto an app to connect with a bank, there is a chatbot there that is computerized, and has to gain knowledge of to apprehend – are you an irritated customer or are you seeking out a loan or are you looking for extra statistics? So that training is very distinctive.
There is lots of fear about reskilling, so how does reskilling seize up with the tempo of technology and what do companies want to do?
If I take a look at what businesses want to do and I can talk from our example. We learned fairly fast that the days of lengthy training are over. The mantra is definitely speedy skilling, micro gaining knowledge of all the time, everywhere or on-the-cross. We, in fact, changed our mastering curriculum and created a new learning framework wherein we have been surely the usage of neural network and know-how of ways humans examine and making it extra experiential, modular and more gamified.
But which means organizations have to put money into education. According to Accenture’s research, 80% of Indian enterprise leaders do now not agree with their workforce has the talents had to paintings with advanced technologies along with AI. Yet, much less than three% plan to boom their schooling funding significantly inside the following few years. There is a gap right here. The ultimate element is the learning itself has to exchange because the manner we have an idea about studying we anticipate that getting to know isn’t like operating. You learn for an X number of years, then you definitely come to the team of workers then you work. One, that model has long gone. Two, there is no predictability anymore. The complete thinking has to alternate, the entire framework has to exchange and notice how we equip our children now not with content material but the way to study. How do we make them agile, equip them with human abilities, due to the fact lots extra of on the way to be wanted?
What about the troubles of facts privateness and cybersecurity? And how have organisations coped with that?
I am satisfied which you requested this because one of the things that we are speaking approximately as our next technology imaginative and prescient going ahead is pronouncing that inside the publish digital global the most important trouble is agree with. What you are pronouncing here is virtually to do with trust, how do you guarantee your customer, your customers, and your people that their records are secured; Secondly, that it’s miles being utilized in a responsible manner because all of us surrender some privateness with a view to getting better services. I permit Google to understand where I am in order that it may give me a better map. Hence, I am giving up my privateness, but that ought to be utilized in an accountable and obvious way, which components of my records are getting used and for what motive. So, it’s a large trouble and really tons boardroom topic. And groups that don’t focus on that have a significant effect on their bottom lines. So, belief is big commercial enterprise trouble because you may have a sizeable negative impact at the business, however additionally nice if your enterprise can be relied on, your brand will do better as compared to another logo.
Why can we have so few women leaders in a generation?
Let’s step returned from generation due to the fact technology as an industry does as an alternative nicely. If you look it across, girls within the team of workers itself is a bigger difficulty. It is a mixture of multiple elements together with how they develop into the workforce, which maintains them within the team of workers. Not simplest inside the workforce but also out of doors- the tradition, the familial, social monetary situations that manifest not take part them or drop out after which third might be what biases exist. Our past due CEO took a stand and we’ve committed that we can be 50:50, i.E, gender-neutral by 2025 and we’re nicely on the course also. In India, approximately forty% of our workforce is girls. So, first off there must be a leadership dedication. It’s like some other commercial enterprise approach that you make a dedication, then you definitely music it and then you definitely post it and then you are transparent approximately it. Secondly, you need to make certain that the policies are around, there’s no factor making a dedication without it. If there’s a method, you will take the steps required to make it work. It’s like some other enterprise approach-what is needed, what plans are wanted, what policy modifications are had to get to that purpose. Lastly, ladies themselves should aspire, raise their fingers and demand their vicinity inside the solar.
