According to research highlighted in The Atlantic, the HR software market is now worth an estimated $15 billion (with learning management systems making up about $2.5 billion of that). But, up to 30% of the corporate training material that companies have developed with them is wasted. And these numbers might start to increase even more as we add HR and L&D initiatives for Internet of Things (IoT) into the mix over the next few years.
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Companies that don’t consider training their employees for the IoT age will be left behind. Indeed, new research parsed in CIO Magazine has indicated that 33% of organizations would benefit from additional skills and that 47% of organizations lack IoT skills altogether. So, as you develop and train your employees for the IoT age to stay ahead of the competition, here are three things you’ll want to remember.
1. Examples of IoT in the Workplace
When you’re training your employees to use and rely on IoT, you’ll want to first know about its many capabilities and how it can be used to benefit your organization. It will be imperative that your employees remain pioneering and willing to explore the various functionalities and use cases for IoT if they’re to implement it in effective and innovative ways.
Companies are using IoT for all types of data-gathering and artificial intelligence initiatives, among other things. 3-D printers are one of the most recognized IoT devices currently in the workplace. But did you know that security systems and buildings themselves are now being connected to the Internet, as well as conference rooms and devices in conference rooms? Sensors connected to the Internet are also being utilized in oil wells and water meters, as well as on fleet trucks, to increase safety concerns and to collect valuable data.
IoT devices and infrastructures offer organizations the opportunity to increase their safety ratings and to collect valuable data surrounding their equipment, operations, customers, and so much more.
2. Hard Skills Your Employees Working with IoT Will Need
Even if you don’t know everything there is to know about IoT, when you’re hiring or upskilling employees for roles that involve and are centered on IoT, you’ll want to make sure they have hard skills in one or more of these areas:
- Embedded systems
- Computer programming
- Networking
- Machine learning
- Big data
- Network security
- UX/UI design
- Mobile development
- Cloud computing
3. Your Current Staff’s Technical Skills
Some of your current staff may be highly adept at learning new IoT technologies and platforms. So, before you hire all new staff to handle your IoT, consider assessing your current staff and how easy it will or will not be for them to handle certain IoT that your organization is starting to implement. It might end up being more cost-effective to train them than it would be to hire and onboard new employees.
Tomorrow’s post will cover five more things you’ll want to remember when training your employees for the IoT age.