If you have any questions or want to share your views, I welcome you to share your thoughts in the comments box below.

The post Mobile Learning: The Future of Workplace Learning (CLO Summit India – Slidedeck) first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

It’s been an issue all along, while India churns out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of university graduates each year, very few of those are employable. Anyone who’s interviewed individuals during recruitment drives knows this. This problem is only set to grow as millions enter the workforce. The as NSDC sees it : The sheer numbers that require training – while I’m not absolutely certain about the numbers, India needs to re-skill or upgrade skills in 500 million individuals by 2022. Numbers that pose a huge challenge in themselves. The lack of vocational training – which leads to ‘un-employability’. In the current scenario, the quality of vocational education offered is pitiful. The government is inadequately equipped and doesn’t really have the funds to train the millions. Another aspect is that most if not all vocational training in India is out-dated that complicates the un-employability issue.

The NSDC was formed by the government of India in partnership with the private sector with the aim to ameliorate this complex situation. It’s been mandated to create large, quality, for-profit, vocational training institutes in India that will address the growing skill gap. Their objective is to improve/impart skills to at least 130+ million individuals (30% of the 500 million). Goes without saying it’s a huge challenge for any private/public partnership, and it was heartening to hear that several private enterprises have already taken the initiative and are being funded (in return for equity or as loans) by NSDC.

If you’re in India and think you have an idea that can make a difference to vocational education, you should definitely check out the NSDC site and apply for funding. One caveat though, they’re looking for ideas that can make a difference to tens of thousands individuals; so your idea must have potential for large scale.

The post India’s Demographic Dividend and NSDC first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

There were several really interesting sessions. We plan to put up a series of posts that recap some of the thoughts shared in those sessions. This is the first post in that series.

Do you need a CLO?

The first session (titled: Organizational Learning: Views from the Leadership) of the Summit was a panel discussion where senior executives from HPCL, Tata Teleservices, & Aditya Birla Group and the Director of TISS constituted the panel. The panel shared some useful insights about the unique situations they face and how L&D happens in their organizations. The key question put up to the panel by the moderator was – Do you need a CLO in your organization? To which, sadly, the majority response was on these lines – The department/division heads already perform that role so we probably don’t need a CLO. That’s definitely not what we were expecting to hear!

Thankfully, when the discussion was thrown open to the audience, the audience seemed to think quite the opposite. Several people from the audience (from companies like Dow Chemicals, Reliance Capital, Raymond, & Lupin) shared their thoughts in favor of having a CLO. The nail was precisely hit on its head when Susan Bloch (CLO at Aditya Birla Group) asked the panel this: “would you replace your CFO with COO tomorrow?”

The answer is NO. The jobs of a CFO and COO need specialized skills and experience and it is impossible to replace one with another just like that. Similarly a CLO needs specialized skills and experience and that cannot be performed by any division/department manager. They (department managers) simply don’t have grounding on how learning takes place or which learning interventions work in which situations. They don’t really know how to keep pace with ever changing landscape of learning theories, models, & technology. Most importantly they don’t have the focus that needs to be brought to organizational learning. They are just too occupied with their other KRAs and learning will simply be the last one they would want to focus on. I think everyone in the audience got this pretty straight. A show of strength later on saw more than 90% people in audience going with YES to having a CLO in organizations.

The post Does your organization need a Chief Learning Officer? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.