Management Perspectives

Digital, AI, and automation technologies are transforming the world and the future of work. The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a vigorous catalyst in this transformation and has tremendously accelerated the whole process. The future of work is likely to be very different from the one that we see now. Take, for example, the education sector, to which I belong. The traditional universities may soon see the end of the road if they do not quickly innovate and leverage modern technologies to make their offerings accessible with no geographical or time barriers. The EdTech companies are growing fast on the horizon and the future in all likelihood belongs to them. In the same way, each sector is transforming and so is changing the skills that will be demanded in the future to deal with this transformed work and workplace. From network being built across companies, we might have companies being built on the network completely. Some have already begun, and others are fast transitioning into the same. So, what are the skills for the future?

MAPPING SKILLS FOR THE FUTURE
Many organisations have tried to enumerate the skills for the future. Some of the studies have really done a great job in doing the same. While these listings of future skills are good in their own ways, each of these studies has presented a slightly different version of skills for the future. Therefore, it was important to map these various future skills reports and create a comprehensive future skills list that could serve as a benchmark for various academic and corporate development programs as well as a guide for personal professional development.

METHODOLOGY
The mapping of the skills for the future was done in two steps- first, mapping across few selected and global future of skill studies, and second, these skills were mapped to different skill categories.

Six top future skills studies were mapped. These include future of skills studies by global bodies, global consultancies, and top recruiter sites World Economic Forum, Forbes, Institute for the Future (IFTF), McKinsey & Company, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW), and Top Resume. The skills were assigned scores (weights) based on where they featured in terms of rank in a particular study. The scores for each skill were then aggregated. Since the maximum score for any skill was assigned as 10, any skill which had an aggregate score of less than 10 was not considered significant enough to be part of the final list. Keeping this criteria, 16 skills made it to the skills for the future category.

This can be considered by far the most acceptable, relevant, and rigorous skills list as it aggregates the rigour that was applied in completing each of these studies by their principal organizations.

In step two, the top 16 skills were mapped to four skill categories- Cognitive skills, people skills, personal skills, and technological skills.

COGNITIVE SKILLS
Cognitive skills will be important in the future that help a person to learn, think, retain information, process information enabling a person to understand meanings, contexts, solve problems and make decisions. This is by far the most important category of skills for the future. Out of the 16 skills, six skills, namely, active learning and learning strategies, critical thinking and analysis (sense making) (smart system), creativity, originality and initiative, judgement and decision making, complex problem solving, transdisciplinarity, analytical thinking and innovation fall under this category. Each of these skills can be further articulated in detail.

PEOPLE SKILLS
With new work models coming into existence, the future of workforce might be connected over network. It should be less of a surprise if one finds a person of Indian nationality living in Dubai working for a European company. This is only going to intensify in the future. With reduction of face-to-face contacts, people skills like teamwork, collaboration, social intelligence, leadership and social influence/ people management and emotional (social) intelligence will needed to manage work and engage people in the future.

PERSONAL SKILLS
The future of work will also require people to change, adapt, and learn at a rapid pace. The workplace built over the network is likely to be extremely diverse in all possible ways. And, rapid changes, disruptions might also bring with them high levels of stress. Personal skills like resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility, embracing change (coping with uncertainty), diversity, and cultural intelligence (cross cultural) (fostering inclusiveness and novel and adaptive (adaptability) would be in great demand in the future.

TECHNOLOGICAL SKILLS
Technology has already pervaded our lives and the future is only going to make this mesh around us denser and stronger. Therefore, technological skills would be in great demand as well. Everyone will be expected to be not only tech-literate but tech-proficient. Technology skills (use, control, monitoring), digital fluency, and new media literacy will be the most in demand.

Do today’s new hires have skills for the future?Having mapped the skills for the future, it was also important to see if the HR managers and business leaders are able to find hires with these skills. Running interviews with HR leaders, entrepreneurs, and business managers I found a general agreement that it was difficult to find new hires with skills for the future.

It is also interesting to note how companies are changing the way they hire. I ran a social media poll to understand how companies are hiring right now and how are they likely to hire in future. The poll that asked the participants to vote if their companies hired more for knowledge than educational degrees, more for skills than experiences, and above all, for the right attitude.

The findings of the survey clearly show that traditional hiring is slowly giving way to a more competency-based hiring where skills will be valued more.

Did millennials learn their top three job skills from the professional schools?

Millennials, today, make up for the majority of the workforce. As traditional hiring is giving way to more competency-based hiring, HR leaders are finding it difficult to find hires who possess skills for the future.

Another study on millennials revealed that majority of them do not think that they acquired the top the skills that they currently used in their jobs from their professional schools. That is indeed a shocking revelation.

By 2025, millennials will make up roughly 75 per cent of the world’s workforce. By 2028, the oldest millennial, will still be quite young and will be entering leadership position. If this soon-to-be-the-largest global workforce, feels that their top skills of today did not come from the professional schools, it certainly is indicative of an existing and continuing gap between what is taught in schools and the attributes desired by the industry.

The gap can be qualified at least in two very significant aspects –

1. The education imparted by professional schools is largely not contributing to the skill development of the graduates.

2. Professional schools do not prepare graduates for the skills needed in the future.

This could also be because most of them are yet to take stock of the future of skills and tailor their curriculum design and delivery on those lines. How many professional schools use the graduate attributes to benchmark their program and then use the principle of backward design to build those learning outcomes into those programs and each course offering?

THE WAY FORWARD
A philosopher once said- ‘Education is the passport to the future’. Education should help one to think critically and build character at the same time. In present times, though, it should also focus on skills. The concept of ‘backward design’ in curriculum design, delivery, and assessment calls for ascertaining the learning outcomes of a course or a program first before deciding on what to teach, how to teach, what to assess, and how to assess. Most professional school programs are over focused on disseminating information and knowledge, but less focused on skills that would help graduates in their career. Hence, it is important for professional schools to revamp their curriculum design and delivery and make it focused on developing skills for the future.