Unlock your employees’ skills

Learning has never been more convenient than now. Whether it’s a one-on-one session or communal learning, anybody can do it now with a plethora of educational platforms within reach within a just a click.

We learn something new each day without us even realizing it through our own doing, interaction with other people or even machines. As humans, the ability to learn is one of our unique characteristics.

We’re capable of reinventing ourselves through knowledge, new skills, behaviours, values and attitudes we acquired through learning.

Learning is essential to our existence, both in our personal or professional lives. And as we navigate our way through this devastating Coronavirus pandemic, learning something new becomes even more essential in the new normal where technology and new smart trends take precedent.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), global working-hour losses in 2020 due to the pandemic were equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs. About 114 million more people lost their jobs and an additional 33 million shifted to other jobs to keep up with the difficult times.

Uncertainties is a grim reality we have to face. And what better way to empower your employees than encouraging them to learn new courses and skills online.

There are an abundant number of prestigious universities, colleges and institutes offering both free and subscription online classes through different platforms. Thousands of short-term courses in all sorts of subjects are offered. There are also specialized fields and even post-graduate studies they can choose from.

Here are the top 5 educational platforms to help your employees upskill themselves.

www.futurelearn.com -This British digital education platform founded in December 2012 is jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) learning platform, and as of March 2020 included +250 UK and international partners, including industry and government partners. Develop hobbies, new skills and career-changing expertise with this platform’s flexible courses managed by world-class universities and industry experts.

edX - Founded by Harvard and MIT, the edX platform was released as open source software in 2013. Today, it powers more than 2,400 learning sites worldwide with more than 35 million users from nearly 200 countries. More than 3,000 courses are offered on its platform.

LinkedIn Learning – Global online career networking platform LinkedIn also offers a vast range of courses in business, design and technology totalling over 16,000. With subscription, you can access them anytime, anywhere with 24/7 support.

Coursera – Founded by Stanford University in 2012, this massive open online course provider works with hundreds of universities, colleges and other organizations to offer online courses, professional certifications and degrees in a variety of fields at prices that are lower than many in-person school offerings.

This platform also offers Coursera for Business, a transformative skill development solution to empower businesses and their teams with the high-impact skills that drive innovation, competitiveness, and gth. Specifically, this offers the following: Provide transformative learning with expert-curated, AI-driven learning programs; Enable hands-on learning to drive rapid skill acquisition, and; Track and measure skill development and benchmark proficiency against industry peers.

MIT Open Courseware – MIT OCW is a free, publicly accessible, openly-licensed digital collection of high-quality teaching and learning materials, presented in an easily accessible format. Bse through, download and use materials from more than 2,500 MIT on-campus courses and supplemental resources, all available under a Creative Commons license for open sharing.

Renowned financial consultancy firm PwC said the pandemic has shown many organizations the discrepancy between the skills people have and those needed for jobs in the digital world.

In February this year, PwC conducted a survey to more than 32,500 workers, one of its largest global surveys so far. 60% of their respondents are worried that automation is putting many jobs at risk and 48.48% believe traditional employment won't be around in the future, and that we’ll sell our skills on a short-term basis to those who need them.

Workers polled say they want more digital skills and what easier way to learn this than on educational platforms.

“Upskilling the global workforce to bridge the digital divide is a complex problem that requires business leaders, governments and educators to work together to make the world a more resilient, more capable and more inclusive place,” PwC said in its report.