The International Labour Organization (ILO) predicted that the current Covid-19 crisis might eventually eradicate almost 25 million jobs worldwide, virtually crippling the global economy. To put it in perspective, the 2008-09 global financial crisis had caused unemployment to go up by 22 million. This is indeed a worrying forecast, both for job-seekers and employers.
Most business and engineering colleges conduct campus placements between December and April every year. With colleges closed and the country under lockdown, placement processes have been halted or left incomplete in most colleges. Those who managed to bag a job before Covid-19 hit the world are waiting with bated breath to join office, while their somewhat unlucky batch mates are hoping to end their job search soon.
With the remote working fast becoming a new reality, organizations can run businesses as usual and avoid job cuts. HR and training departments can churn out trained staff to be assigned to various departments. And new recruits do not need to wait till the crisis gets over to be a part of their dream organizations.
Prepare new recruits for challenges ahead
Even as organizations are mobilizing resources to mitigate the Covid-19 impact, future remains as uncertain as ever. But the lessons learnt during this crisis will help organizations to prepare for the unforeseen. What Covid-19 has underscored is the need for business to be resilient and prepared — traits that will stand businesses in good stead long after the public health has been normalized. Companies should make most out of this difficult period by empowering their workforce for a quick bounce back. So, once the situation starts improving, the company and its entire workforce can focus entirely on the recovery and growth.
Train new joinees remotely for future roles
Organizations pick the best of the talents to meet their business requirements. Thus, it becomes imperative to not allow those young minds to drift into despair and hopelessness during such troubled times. Organizations can help new recruits sharpen their skills in this downtime and prepare them for future business challenges.
With virtual labs solution, employers can deploy eLearning programs to train new recruits remotely. Every company’s needs are different. So, training resources can be tailor-made as per their needs to provide in-depth product and business knowledge to newcomers through hackathons and hands-on workshops. They can also enable remote access to programming labs to facilitate hands-on learning from home.
Guide new hires through the initial days
Coming on board during a nation-wide lockdown and social isolation, is no doubt a difficult proposition. And when people are bracing for prolonged remote working period, it may become an isolating experience, especially when you don’t know your colleagues. Thus, it is critical to engage new recruits in an engaging and interactive manner. Keeping training activities as focused as possible helps reduce the stress of the process. With advanced virtual leaning solutions, HRs or team managers can also keep tabs on who all are participating in the activities and who all are not.
What companies should look for in a virtual lab solution
Minimum help from IT: New recruits should be able to access the resources from their own devices without IT team’s intervention. Team leads or HRs should have the flexibility to deploy and manage virtual labs on their own, without any prior knowledge and training of the underlying infrastructure. Also, the resources could be provided to end users without any pre-configuration on end users’ machines.
Schedule-based remote access: It should provision a single virtual lab for team leads as well as new joinees, providing them access to dynamic resources in real time during video training sessions. Also, the solution should enable remote employees to have real-time access to training resources, programming labs, etc. on any device.
Strong authentication: The virtual lab solution should have strong security features to restrict users to running limited applications and prevent them from copying data from company applications. The presence of multi-factor authentication would ensure that only authorized users access the virtual labs. The company officials should also be able to monitor who accesses what and at what time, to ensure new recruits take their training seriously.
Secure Delivery of lab resources: Securely deliver labs content to the new joinees, irrespective of where they are and what device or network they are using.
How Accops solution tackles the challenges
Accops offers a virtual ICT lab solution that enables employees to have remote access to lab environments on their own devices from home. With the Accops solution, enterprise can provide schedule-based access to existing physical labs or create new virtual labs on the fly.
Using dynamic ICT facilities with automated orchestration feature, organizations can equip their young employees with tools and resources they need to unlock their full potential.
Key benefits are as follow:
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- Easier Lab Management: Manage labs virtually, enabling access to all training documents and applications on demand
- Remote Lab Access: Enable remote access to ICT labs to empower remote employees to train from anywhere using their own devices
- Enhanced Digital Learning Experience: Seamless persistent user experience for employees accessing IT lab environment from remote locations
- Self-serviced portal: Employees can access training resources from their own device through a self-service enabled portal without much IT assistance.