A tightening labor market and the short shelf life of skills have created a lot of skill gaps. Businesses must now try to stay ahead of the competition by retaining their best talent and filling key positions. Everyone wants to remain relevant in this automation age. There is a need to learn the most important skills to secure a career that will be relevant in the next decade.
Skills that were essential in the past are now automatable and this has created a space for people to build new professional skills to remain valuable. It is easy to think that your job is secure, but automation is present in every industry. Research has shown that around 47% of jobs in the United States may be replaced with automation and smart machines in the future. This is the best time to consider what skills are essential and start job training to keep your career safe.
What Skills do People Need Today?
Reports from hiring organizations reveal that there is a serious skill gap in both prospective and current employees. High-level executives report little or no skill from 92% of Americans when it comes to both soft and hard skills. These executives also believe that around 44% of Americans lack essential soft skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. What this means is that lots of Americans lack the most important skill for the future of work.
If you want to learn the skills that will ensure your relevance in the future, do not focus on only the latest technologies. Robotic automation and programming languages may be trendy as they change how employees work, but your soft skills will be the determining factor in your success as an individual.
The World Economic Forum ranked critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity as the main skills employees will require to thrive in the future workplace. Creativity is one of the three essential skills needed. As new technologies and systems are discovered, employees need to be able to manage them with creativity. Robots are not creative like humans so this edge will always favor you.
Flexibility and negotiation were a part of the list of skills in 2015, but it may no longer be relevant in a future where machines use big data in the decision-making process. LinkedIn also discovered something similar in its 2018 report, which suggests that 57% of business leaders believe soft skills are more important in job performance. The report listed collaboration, leadership, and communication as the most important skillset needed by employees.
How to Gain These Soft Skills as an Employee
Experts believe that design thinking can help. Design thinking encompasses fundamental elements such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, leadership, and communication. This crash course in soft skills can help employees get all they need to succeed in an automated future. Design thinking workshops are built to solve a problem or challenge. Employees can hone crucial skills in a meaningful way using this approach.
When such an employee knows they will be using the skills to solve problems at work, it will be more engaging. Also, the model creates a cycle of learning that makes sure that employees develop the required soft skills and recognize their value on the job. If you feel that you lack soft skills that may be essential to keeping your job in the future, consider design thinking. Some tasks may require critical thinking or creativity and you can use the method to sharpen relevant skills, ensuring that your place in the future of work is guaranteed.
Conclusion
Skills training will come in handy if employees must secure a place for themselves in the future. So far, the transformation has touched different industries with the investment and financial services sector still lagging in some aspects. Manufacturing and sales marketers need new skills as well to meet up with technological literacy. Other parts of the industry have advanced faster such as cloud computing and mobile internet. They are already changing how we work. 3D printing and artificial intelligence are still new, but experts predict these technologies will move quickly. Change will not wait for anyone. All potential employees must be proactive and upskill so they can take part in the fourth industrial revolution.
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