Upskilling

The emerging digital world of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is rapidly becoming a reality for millions of workers around the world. The intrinsic opportunities for financial prosperity, societal advancements and individual growth in this new world of work are vast, yet highly dependent on all those impacted to proactively identify and develop the necessary skills needed to harness these potentials. New highly effective jobs and greatly improved work experience and productivity are enabled through technology, though it is evident that this wave of advancement is also set to reduce the number of workers required for certain roles.

This therefore will result in a transition for a vast number of workers and the need for investment in people development, with the development of soft skills alongside digital skills being of equal importance. Upskilling has therefore become the indispensable response to ongoing technological advancements and organisations must continue to recognise human capital investment as an asset and take an active role in supporting their workforce through their reskilling and upskilling journey.

Upskilling: Bridging the Digital Divide

In this short documentary, academics, NGOs, policymakers and business leaders explain why upskilling for a digital world has become a priority for society, organisations and governments. We’re at an inflection point — we need to act now, collectively, to tackle this major, global issue before we risk excluding great swathes of society from the workplace. This is a complex problem that will require decision-makers to come together.

Upskilling the world's youth

As part of our New world. New skills. programme, a collaboration with UNICEF has been launched with the aim of helping upskill the world’s youth. Our collaboration with UNICEF will support Generation Unlimited, a multi sector partnership aimed at helping 1.8 billion young people transition from school to work by 2030. PwC and UNICEF, in support of Generation Unlimited, will together convene public, private and civil society stakeholders to develop investment opportunities, programmes and innovations that support young people in their path to productive futures and engaged citizenship.

The collaboration will also support research on the global skills challenge and develop and expand education and skills programmes in countries, including in India and South Africa.

How we can help

We support your organisation through every step of this process, from the early stages to the implementation phase. To help you upskill your workforce and keep pace with the required skills in the digital world, we can help you with:

Workforce Strategy
Identification of future workforce needs in line with organisational transformation and digital strategies
Identification of role transformations
Organisational design

Identification of required skills and skill gaps

Skills development plans to bridge the skills gap to tomorrow’s jobs
Align your business, workforce and learning strategies to identify and test the key elements of upskilling plans

Personalised upskilling learning journeys

Identifying employees and individuals who need to transition to new or transformed roles and supporting them through rapid, personalised upskilling journeys

Skills Development

Delivering upskilling programmes through PwC Academy
Designing and delivering tailored engaging learning experiences to create a digitally mindful workforce, with soft skills alongside digital skills as well as technical skills

Change Management

Use People Centred Change Approach to deliver sustainable change
We help you to think through the drivers that support learning effectiveness and to build a robust narrative about your future workforce
Coaching employees and management throughout the transformation journey

Why PwC?

PwC is at the forefront of this global imperative and has developed various initiatives and service offerings to support government, businesses and individuals throughout this transformational journey, namely:

we bring together an unmatched combination of industry, business, strategy, policy, talent, HR, analytics and technology expertise;
we have strong multidisciplinary capabilities and a proven track record through our global Workforce network of helping our clients across all industries to rethink their Workforce Strategy, transform their workforce model, upskill their people, and to change the way they think about people management;
we leverage PwC’s own upskilling journey and our unique assets and tools to help clients to upskill their people for a digital world;
our team of specialists have significant experience in people development and can provide you tailored solutions with a strong added value to meet your skills requirements;
our people-centric change approach is key to driving a successful end-to-end change management initiative to achieve the organisation’s strategy;
our PwC Academy has developed training programmes which prepares individuals and organisations for the future of work;
we conduct research and studies on topics related to the future of work to provide you with useful thought leadership pieces.