“Why Reskilling is so Important to the Transportation and Automotive Industry”

2020 has been a remarkable year. There are few times in history where we have seen such change. However where there is change, there is opportunity to grow! The global pandemic forced the world to use technology in a different way. The world connected online like never before and today’s advancements in transportation, with connected cars, autonomous vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles, are pushing the limits of innovations. Our world is changing at lightning speed. The advancements in technology and information have caused a significant transformation for our world and for our workers of the future.

"The NEXT Education delivers professional training, continuing education and certification in fields including intelligent transportation, new mobility, cybersecurity and autonomous systems."

I look to the future with hope and excitement as I see opportunity for a more equitable, more sustainable world. I see a world where those who need transportation can have access to it. As the need for contactless delivery increases, I see how a more sustainable transportation structure will benefit communities. As autonomous vehicles on the ground or in the air enter the scene how will our worker network need to adapt? What is the solution? Obviously, we must close this growing gap to train people in this new world that will include concepts of new mobility, smart cities, and intelligent infrastructure.

In order to move forward as an industry, we need more people with a knowledge base and skill set in the autonomous vehicle industry; people with the passion and the purpose to change the future. But how? The precedent would suggest taking a trip to top colleges and recruiting a whole new team because in the past, we’ve had generations between the changes taking place in technology and have been able to solve the learning gap by slowly bringing in fresh faces across a few years. But current advances in digitalization are moving too fast for that. It’s impractical today to find an entirely new team. Not only can companies not justify a complete employee turnover, they also can’t afford it. Fortunately, those very same people: technicians, installers, and software engineers in the field have provided us with the solution: learning new skills. They’ve been retraining and upskilling themselves. They’ve sought out conferences, watched videos, experimented, and learned by trial and error until they found the skills they needed. Then they grew, worked their way up that corporate ladder, and began training others to follow in their footsteps.

And that’s the solution. Finding suitable, formal training/reskilling programs for people and companies is the realistic response to close this gap. Why hire new employees when you have boundless amounts of potential labor force already supporting you? As we all know, it’s twice as expensive to sign a new customer than to retain an existing one. Shouldn’t the same logic apply to employees? Bank on those very real resources already in front of you.

This new way of learning will require an overhaul in the way workers are trained. There’s an ever-growing gap to support all of the growing workforce needs that will be required in the new era of self driving cars and intelligent transportation.

What is the good news? We will have new opportunities to grow these industries. How? Through growing people to be agents of change for the future. And that is where we come in. Partnerships with formal further education providers, like The NEXT Education (www.thenexted.com), are the perfect resource for retraining and upskilling current employees. Dedicated, accomplished and seasoned instructors who have gained the skills and are wholly invested in sharing that knowledge can relieve some of the pressures felt by management teams, HR representatives, and CEOs that feel responsible for their employees. We are professionals from an international range of industries and are prepared to take on that challenge. We are hands-on, ready to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty to create actionable methods and solutions to close that ever-growing gap together. IE