In recent decades, the world of work has undergone profound and rapid change. Digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the employment landscape, redefining not only roles and tasks, but also the key skills required by employers.
In this ever-changing scenario, companies are increasingly looking for professionals who can adapt and meet the challenges of an ever-changing marketplace.
Join us as we explore how the changing world of work is impacting the key skills most in demand and how professionals can prepare to face the future with confidence and competence.
Digitalization and upcoming challenges
According to predictions by the World Economic Forum, digitalization, by 2025, will result in more than 50 percent of employees having to upgrade or reset their skills.
Not only that, technical skills that were once central are giving way to the much talked about soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity and emotional intelligence.
Many HR Managers are already talking about job reset, that is the need to redesign roles and activities as well as create new ones. In this context, companies can provide training pathways to help employees retrain.
Strategies to deal with Job Reset
Assuming that the job reset is inevitable, let’s look at some strategies for managing it.
At Apprendoo, we have already talked about Upskilling and Reskilling, precisely because these are not trivial trends, but a real necessity, part of the ongoing training approach that should be a staple for any company that wants to stay on top of the wave.
In general, it is a matter of embracing change, anticipating it, and moving with it without succumbing to it.
Top 5 required Key Skills
Enough philosophizing, it’s time to get down to practice! 🚀
Here are the 5 skills that are becoming increasingly important in the workplace.
1. Critical Thinking
People have been talking about it for a long time, but what exactly does it consist of?
It consists of drawing conclusions based on patterns and connections found in the data.
It means, for example, taking questions that may be difficult to understand and breaking them down into their constituent micro-questions in order to critically evaluate them and identify patterns and connections.
Finally, conclusions are drawn based on evidence and reasoning.
Critical thinking was the top skill in 2023 and we expect it to remain so. On the other hand, it is a skill that is required at every level and will take you far! 😉.
But how do you go about developing it? Here are some tips:
- Start by practicing problem solving on a small scale.
- Be inspired by your more experienced colleagues or the great thinkers who have laid the groundwork for critical thinking over the centuries.
- Analyze data, learn to interpret it, and reason about the conclusions you reach.
2. Creative Thinking
Unlike analytical thinking, creative thinking involves thinking outside the box to arrive at unique solutions.
Accordingly, broadly speaking, it contemplates generating original and imaginative ideas, exploring possibilities not necessarily in the foreground, and finding connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.
We want to give you some tips on how to develop your creative thinking!
- The first thought isn’t always the best, but don’t discard the first solution-even if it’s usually the most obvious. Consider it and then leave room for more creative or intuitive ideas.
- Reflect on your ways of thinking, because we all have unconscious biases and assumptions, so it can be easy to limit yourself to a linear way of thinking that hinders your ability to consider all possible paths.
- Expand your horizons, because there is a need to get out of our self-imposed boundaries and explore beyond your own comfort zone and industry – you might learn something interesting and unconventional! 😉
- Brainstorm so that you can examine and analyze each idea, as well as open your mind and cultivate a creative atmosphere.
- Don’t be afraid to fail! If you do not accept failure, you will stop at the first hurdle. To be truly creative, you must take risks and accept failure as a natural part of the process.
3. Resilience, Flexibility and Agility
The World Economic Forum groups these three skills together as “the ability to adapt, thrive, and remain productive in the face of varying adversity or expectations.
Again, here’s some advice.
- Resilience comes into play as you embark on a long, slow, nonlinear process that tends toward continuous innovation.
- Embrace change, even if it is scary, but it is in the space between “old” and “new” that we find our resilience and grow. Be flexible and embrace new experiences that take you out of your comfort zone. With experience, you will learn to move nimbly between the challenges you encounter 😉.
4. Motivation and Self-Awareness
There is no need to explain why these two qualities/competencies are central to achieving one’s goals and taking on the toughest challenges.
Finding the motivation to do your best at work is not a given, so it is helpful to situate yourself within a larger purpose outside of your specific role. How does what you do contribute to the world around you, what value does it bring? 🌍
Bonus tip: to maintain motivation over time, map out a clear path with many small steps leading to the end goal. Appreciate each milestone to create positive reinforcement in your mind, but also reflect: What worked and what didn’t? What could you do better next time? This exercise will help you develop self-awareness. 🧘
5. Curiosity and Continuous Learning
For us at Apprendoo, these are two elements that we encourage every day through our favorite e-learning platform or our trusted authoring tool.
Curiosity is something we develop as children and unfortunately tends to disappear with age, but – along with motivation – it is the most powerful engine behind what we do (and the most important skill!). Cultivate it. 🌱
“How?” you’ll ask. Mainly in three ways:
- question everything. Don’t settle for a single answer when you think you need to go deeper: ask questions!
- Don’t be clouded by judgment. It is not easy, of course, since it is an inherent feature of the human psyche, but – often – judging a person, a new experience, or an idea a priori hinders our ability to learn. Keep an open mind! 💡
- Dedicate time to learning so that you can fill in gaps or simply expand your knowledge in your area of interest. A mind trained to learn is a mind ready for anything. 💪
Other key skills for the future
There are other cross-cutting key competencies that will be critical to acquiring in the near future in order to stay ahead and continue to perform at our best.
The first, and most prominent, relates to interaction with employees: it is a recent but long-awaited trend to promote inclusive communication, characterized by open dialogue that respects individual sensitivities. One must strive to build and maintain an increasingly ethical and sustainable corporate culture (we have already talked about both creating a new cultural mindset within the company and strategies for building a truly inclusive corporate culture).
Almost as important is having a big-picture view that allows you to identify trends and changes in the marketplace so that you can successfully align people with business goals and drive results.
Mastering new technologies is not just about being able to read and interpret data, as we mentioned earlier. Artificial intelligence is now playing an increasingly important role in the workplace (and in learning!).
In short
In light of this scenario, every organization must ensure that its leaders and managers are equipped with the key skills they need to manage change and uncertainty while maintaining productivity.
HR and Learning and Development teams can have a huge impact on preparing organizations for the future by working with employees on their training and career paths to help them evolve in line with market needs.
Whether it’s creativity, interpersonal skills or agile thinking, the key is to stay curious and open to new things. Word from Apprendoo! 🤝
See you next time!
#neverstoplearning
