Skill Training
Jim Rohn, the famous American entrepreneur and author, once said: “You can cut down a tree with a hammer, but it takes about 30 days. If you trade the hammer for an axe, you can cut it down in about 30 minutes. The difference between 30 days and 30 minutes is skills.”
One can easily deduce from the above quotation, the value of having a skill today. The earth has so many people and so little resources with so much inequality in it that being successful is quite challenging for most of the people unless they know exactly what they need to do. In such a situation, what is most required to achieve something is “Skill”. It is one of the most important things that one must have to make an indelible mark on the world.
So, first of all, it would be much helpful if we come to grasp the idea of skill. One need to understand it properly before one can make complete use of it for the utmost benefit. It would not be wrong to state that one needs a set of skills such as communication skills and leadership skills to become successful in any field of work they might indulge in.
What is a skill?
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, skill is:
“the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance.” or, “a learned power of doing something competently: a developed aptitude or ability.”
Skill can also be defined as applying one’s acquired knowledge in an effective manner with predetermined outcomes to be accomplished in a given amount of time with limited resources that is available to the person.
Why do we need skills training?
1. To get recruited: Most employers want their employees to be well-versed in a number of skills. This is the reason why they, most of the time prefer candidates with good skills over those candidates with little or no skills. The importance of skills can also be gauged from the fact that many companies even after recruiting their employees, make them undergo some sort of training in order to make them more skillful and hence more profitable to the company. More interesting is that many companies willingly pay for the training of their own employees because a trained skillful employee is a great asset to the company who will benefit them in the longer run.
2. Requirement of the workplace:Modern workplace requires people to work in an office in most of the cases, where one comes in contact with people who might come from other parts of the country or even the world, if the company employs international workers. As such, the workplace is filled with people who come from very different cultures and all are made to work together, many times as a team to accomplish the target of the company. In such a situation, it becomes extremely important that employees are well-equipped with crucial skills as communication skills, to effectively communicate with every person. On the other hand, skills like leadership are very essential if a work has to be done properly with a team of subordinates where a proper leadership, guidance and control is more or less basic instruments through which the employees can be assigned different tasks and monitored efficiently to ensure that the work is completed on time.
3. To interact with consumers: Many times, employees working in a company need to come in direct contact with consumers who might buy the goods or services produced or provided by the company, are totally influenced by the behaviour, knowledge and skills of the employees. A un-skilled or even bad, a poorly-skilled person will affect the sales of the company negatively, while on the other hand, a highly-skilled employee will sway the consumer to buy, making profit for the company.
4. Requirement of changing times and of future: As we know, the world is going through a phase of automation in which jobs are being automated i.e. machines are replacing people at the workplace. So, in future, many jobs that are now performed by humans, would be taken over by machines. This would make jobs more scarce and competition for the limited available jobs more severe. This makes it clear that those who are well-skilled will have a lot of chances and opportunities to get recruited when compared to those who don’t have the requisite skills. Though the machines are getting smarter day by day, they can’t replace those jobs which require soft skills. So, these jobs would always be available to the people who can skill and re-skill themselves depending upon the exigencies of the situation and requirements of time.
How are skill training beneficial to businesses?
Skills are very much essential to businesses. It is safe to state that no business can ever succeed without their workforce having some basic set of skills. This has become truer in recent times with the advent of modern technology which has accelerated the pace of globalisation and competition. These are how skills and entailing skill training are beneficial to businesses:
1. Increase in Productivity: Skill training helps in increasing the productivity of any workplace. A more productive workplace means more profit to the company and a profitable company keeps on working and producing, ensuring income security of its workers.
2. Improvement in Teamwork: Skill training helps in improving teamwork by assigning specific tasks to different people by their skills of working together as a team which is very essential to get success today.
3. Retention of Employees: Employees of the company who invest in training of their employees are less likely to leave their employer thus benefiting the company in the longer run. The company would feel less burdened as it does not have to recruit new employees and then spend on their training.
4. Employee Satisfaction: It goes without saying that every relationship is based on reciprocity. Employer-Employee relation is no exception either. When the employer invests in their employees, the employees also feel obliged morally by their very human nature to reciprocate and they work even harder for the betterment of the company which results in the growth of the company. The loyalty of employees is one of the most important things that no employer can afford to let go.
5. More Customers/Consumers: When customers of a company are satisfied and happy with the services of the company and with behaviour and skills of its employees, they are most likely to recommend that company to their friends, family, colleagues and relatives. This generally translates into more profit for the company.
How skills are necessary for individuals?
Educational qualification may or may not get you earning, but a skill would always help you earn and make a living. In our lives, we happen to engage in a lot of different scenarios where our skills decide if that moment would turn out in our favour. Presence or absence of a requisite skill at the very moment can result in great benefit or devastating loss for any individual. These are some instances which would help you grasp the idea of why skills for every individual are the need of the hour:
1. To get employment: Employers usually recruit by seeing the skills that you possess. By having relevant skills, you can easily overcome the competition and get selected for a company through an interview or otherwise. Having skills gives you a clear-cut edge over all others who might be competing against you. Also, with sufficient and appropriate skills, one can start his own company, business, venture, shops, etc. instead of working for others. One might work for himself and provide jobs to others on the other hand. With skills, earning becomes almost certain. It does not matter whether one works for a company or is self-employed. Sometimes, self-employment pays more.
2. To excel at the workplace: Let’s say, there are many people working at a workplace. The boss wants to assemble a team of highly skilled individuals and get them started to work on a very significant project which would be highly profitable and game-changing for the company. With the future of the company depending on this project, who do you think, should lead the team? Some might say, one most educated among them should lead the team, Right? Not necessarily. The most appropriate solution would be to make that person the project head who possess excellent leadership skills. This might seem strange that a person who has excellent leadership qualities should be chosen over the most educated one but the reality is, in today’s world, only intellect and education don't decide the outcome of your efforts. The skills that one possesses would eventually decide whether the person appointed to lead the team can actually make every member of the team do its part by solving problems as rivalry, jealousy, lack of communication, different individuals assigned mismatched tasks, etc. Having such skills would increase your chances of leading such teams when the time and opportunity pops up.
3. To get funding: Suppose one wants to start his own business. It is no secret that one needs money or funding for this. What if one does not have the required sum of money? One would have to find the investors who can invest in his business. But there would be many approaching him for the investment and he would surely invest only if he is satisfied with the claims that the business would succeed and his investment would earn him good returns. One might have a good business idea but if he does not have good communication skills, he might not be able to convince him enough to invest in his business. By acquiring good communication skills, one becomes able to effectively communicate the ideas to someone and convince them enough to secure his funding. This way, one would be able to overcome competition and get his business going.
Why choose MappingSkills for skill training?
We are MappingSkills, excel at providing the required skill training to individuals and cater to the needs of companies or businesses seeking to impart training to their new recruits and also to their existing employees who might need new skill training to remain relevant in the ever changing world.We provide skill training through various means such as on-site, classroom and online modes of training. Our methods include training crafted to the needs of each individual by experienced and personalised mentors. Though the training ends on time as promised by us, our work does not. We continue to assist even after training is complete in search of opportunities that would have you secure a job.