Education

4 min read

What are Future Skills and Why do We Need Them?

If you haven’t by now, you will likely keep hearing about ‘future skills’ or ‘21st century skills’ in the few years to come. Is it just a trendy buzzword? Or is it really something that we are embracing? As employers and business owners ourselves operating businesses across a range of industries, we see that ‘future skills’ are here to stay. Here’s why…

Without a doubt, we have experienced a sea change at work over the past few years. Developments in digital technology and AI, already swift, accelerated in the backdrop of a global Covid-19 pandemic. Going ‘remote’, a lifestyle previously adopted by ‘work from anywhere’ digital nomads became a requirement overnight. Catering to the development and further adoption of cloud computing, automation, and AI, we have seen new industries appear and wholly new roles (’Lord of Memes’ anyone?) being created. Ongoing developments in ESG and Social Impact that is increasingly being integrated into the corporate world, likewise, open up more types of roles and skill sets needed. This calls for closer collaboration between disciplines within companies as well as externally with industries.

So what exactly are ‘future skills’? With technology being at the forefront, it’s not a surprise that digital literacy and data analytics skills will grow in importance. Aside from these more obvious hard skills, there is a group of ‘soft skills’, which have not traditionally been seen as “priority”, that will increasingly be on the top of employers’ minds. Interpersonal skills to do with collaboration, developing empathy and empowerment for team mates, and the ability to resolve conflicts are all key to the future of work. Further, critical thinking, structured problem-solving, design thinking, and storytelling skills are all cognitive skills to deal with the agility, planning, and communication required in roles that integrate digital and physical worlds as well as fast-paced and customer- or user-centric environments where change is the constant.

On a personal level, the integration of technology in our lives is almost so seamless that we hardly notice it. Our adoption of technology will only go up - it will continue to offer us increased flexibility on time, place of work, and our methods of work. However, increasingly integrated technology in our work and daily lives also means more capacity and diversity in how we use technology. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report 2022, 50% of all employees globally will need to re-skill by 2025 as the adoption of technology increases. What this undoubtedly means is a need for us to develop and enhance diverse ‘future skills’ that can enable us to not only survive but to thrive in the coming years of accelerated change. The range of ‘future skills’ in question are more often than not skills that we can start building on in our adolescence and youth. Our future workforce will only become more and more diverse and multidimensional!