As organizations continue to adapt to the changes, some have gone on to leverage this period of lockdown to train their employees and help them develop new skills

FREMONT, CA: The offset of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a new world order where people are forced to work from home. For over three months now, employees have been confined to their homes and have not had a taste of the office atmosphere. In light of public safety, some companies have gone on to extend their work from home options further, despite businesses returning to normalcy in many regions. The challenge was not only to adapt to a new style of work but also to transform business models. Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed business as we know it, with many companies being forced to adapt their business models to a world moving in harmony with coronavirus.

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As organizations continue to adapt to the changes, some have gone on to leverage this period of lockdown to train their employees and help them develop new skills. Connecticut based Questionmark, provider of secure enterprise-grade assessment platform and professional services, recently released new figures from its study, which show that technology, professional services, and pharmaceuticals have demonstrated the highest year on year increases in learning and development training, registering growths of 74 percent, 42 percent, and 26 percent respectively.

"Questionmark delivers nearly 30 million individual assessments every year. Our clients often use the platform to carry out a broad range of assessments. These include assessments for compliance and in connection with learning or hiring decisions," said Lars Pedersen, CEO of Questionmark. In contrast to the rise in the three sectors, retail, utilities, and public sector have registered a fall in learning and development training given to employees by 28 percent, 30 percent, and 90 percent, respectively.

Questionmark was ranked as one of the Top talent Management Solution Providers for 2020 by Manage HR magazine. "Many businesses have been getting their people up to speed with their training while they've been at home during the lockdown. In other areas, such as retail and utilities, where key workers have continued to keep vital services going, there has been less opportunity to focus on training," Pedersen added. “Instead, essential retailers and utilities will have put more emphasis on pre-hire screening. This helps manage the extra volume of staff needed to keep services going and helps ensure that they take on people with the right skills. This has been especially important in retail as large supermarkets, for instance, have had to redeploy their people to deliver more online and click and collect.”