Reskilling employees is more important to IT industry, says Nasscom

Chennai: The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) said on Thursday that despite growth in Information Technology leading to creation of more jobs, reskilling of employees becomes more important to the industry. Firstpost had highlighted earlier that skilling was the way out of the job crisis plaguing the IT sector. Read about it here . Stating that the IT industry with turnover of US $154 billion employs about 3.9 million people, NASSCOM President R Chandrashekhar said on Thursday if India remains under US $154 billion turnover it would require less number of employees. “But we do not remain at US $154 billion. We continue to grow. We (NASSCOM) had already shared with you that the industry is expected to grow at 7-8 percent. And that growth also leads to more jobs,” he said. Chandrashekhar was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual HR Summit here. Noting that automation in industry “destroy” jobs, he said industry growth leads to “creation of more jobs.” [caption id=“attachment_2892742” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image - Reuters[/caption] “So, as long as pace of growth is fast than reduction of employment due to automation, net employment continues to grow. That is the situation we are in today, where pace of growth is still outpacing rate of job loss,” he said. On the creation of new jobs, Chandrasekhar said new jobs require higher skills subsequently leading to “reskilling becoming very important to the industry.” “The jobs which are created is different from the jobs which are lost. It is not that 50 jobs are gone and 100 jobs are created. The (additional) 50 jobs created are different and that has implications,” he said. “The new jobs require higher skills and therefore reskilling has become very important,” he said. “Reskilling and upskilling has become topmost priority for employee retention so every employee knows today if they don’t upskill sooner or later they are going to be redundant,” he said. “It is also critical for companies also to offer opportunities for their employees to be reskilled,” he said. Noting that 21 million jobs were lost every year in the US, either due to technology or business changes, he said, “It is not a sad thing. Because 23 million jobs are created which is again an example of the fact that technology creates more jobs than it eliminates.”