Authors: Associate Professor V.Punitha, Ansari
Abstract: As digital transformation disrupts industries, it leads to a growing skills gap, compromising organizational competitiveness and employee employability. This paper examines the effectiveness of micro-credentials, gamified learning, mentoring learning, and immersive simulation (virtual reality/augmented reality) as upskilling techniques on their impact on workforce readiness. Through a longitudinal quantitative and qualitative study involving 1,200 employees in 15 organizations (manufacturing, finance, and healthcare) from 2023-2025, we evaluate the success of the upskilling techniques based on skill acquisition speed, knowledge retention, improvements in job performance, and engagement rates. Results indicate that while immersive simulation techniques lead to the highest performance improvement (increase of 34.2%), they are also the most costly upskilling method ($2,800 per employee). On the other hand, gamified learning is the most effective in terms of cost efficiency (performance gain per dollar spent), while also yielding the highest engagement rate (88%).
DOI: http://doi.org/
