The fourth industrial revolution has already begun.

Businesses that are not agile and those that are not operating on modern technology platforms are quickly becoming obsolete. The new business landscape requires immense skills in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, data science, connectivity and a vast amount of other technical capabilities.

Data is indicating that as jobs are transformed by technologies in the fourth industrial revolution, we’ll need to reskill more than one billion people by 2030.

The faster the work changes, the more important it becomes to build a team of lifelong learners and give them the resources they need to learn.

According to the World Economic Forum’s recent research, it has been predicted that, by 2025, several million jobs are likely to experience a major shift in terms of the allocation of functions between man and machine.

With a rapidly changing job landscape and accelerated pace of technology innovation and automation, leaders and HR heads have to place a high premium on upskilling and reskilling to understand the critical needs of the workforce.

Nowhere is this need felt more than in the industry which actually sells products and services that drive technology innovation.

Upskilling - This is the process of enhancing employees’ skills, enabling them to acquire new skills within their current job function that will help them perform to the best of their ability. The constant emergence of new technologies and changing face of the workplace have accelerated the need for upskilling.

Upskilling helps owners and employees in the channel trade to bridge the skills gaps through continuous professional development. The entire channel trade would need to quickly upskill their people with courses which assist them to become digital specialists.

Reskilling – This is the process of acquiring new skills required to perform a completely different role. It focuses on the employee’s need to learn an entirely new skill set. The entire gamut of organisations in the channel trade need to move fast. They can do so by retraining their existing employees to take on those roles, which will keep companies functioning well even during times of change. These costs will be much lower than hiring fresh expertise and taking time to evaluate them.

As economic changes concerning innovation, inflation, funding winters and hiring winters occur, workforces will have to adapt and respond accordingly. The most significant outcome of this challenge will be an enhanced emphasis on employee skill development. And the most feasible way to go about it would be to work jointly with brands, distributors, the channel and employees toward their professional development. The traditionalists and the new age technologists will have to find ways to create better outcomes.

Most companies were forced to move all or parts of their processes online during the pandemic. However, the sudden transition made many owners, leaders and professionals aware of the huge skills gaps in their employees.

Learning isn’t just about helping employees move up in their careers anymore; it’s about making their careers more durable. If organisations and the channel trade do not provide employees with a way to keep up with the merciless pace of professional technology, good employees will start looking for other alternatives.

Either we keep investing in retraining and upskilling our current workforce or we will keep spending more in hiring and onboarding.

Gen Z has already started entering the formal and informal workforce. They grew up with technology. They understand technology's continuous impact on how business is done better than anyone else. They know they need to keep learning to stay relevant and keep advancing. They are tomorrow’s talent. If the entire channel wishes to leave a better legacy, and if the trader wants to keep tomorrow’s top talent, the onus falls on the current owners and decision-makers to show them that we know it as well.

TEXUB is a newly born global B2B marketplace that is paving the way for the future of IT and Mobility trade, with the UAE as its home base. TEXUB has launched DigiNOMICS, a unique training program to assist B2B IT and mobility buyers, sellers and traders in their digital transformation journeys. Its goal is to educate people about the economics of digitalisation and trade as they evolve around the world. The program focuses on how businesses can increase their revenue by transitioning from traditional legacy systems to smart digital systems.

In an era of multiple and serious disruptions to the labour market -- the pandemic, supply chain changes, the green transition, technological transformation, ageing, geopolitical tensions -- the one best investment is in education, reskilling and upskilling.

Let the channel trade which helps in supplying technology hardware and software to fuel the world’s needs also pioneer and show the way in reskilling and upskilling.