As economics and social norms continue to change, these four specific skills are in high demand.
Modern workplaces have undergone a pretty rapid shift in the past couple of years, and with that change, arises a demand for new skills that are beyond the conventional. Employers are looking for more than “just” the hard skills that come with your degree or certification.
As economics and social norms continue to change, there’s a much larger need for interpersonal and communication skills than ever before.
Let’s take a look into some of the most in-demand skills in the current job marketplace.
The idea of communication as a specialized skill, can come across as a little cliche. After all, what employer wants to hire someone they can’t understand or vice versa? Communication goes a little bit deeper than a basic understanding of language, however.
Effective communication can save yourself and your employer, time. It can smooth over conflicts with other employees, fuel innovative ideas within projects, and can even drive massive change within the company as a whole.
Modern employees need to be far more deliberate about communication than at any time in the past. Never leave anything to chance. If you’re not entirely clear about an instruction, requirement or guideline, you need to ask a question.
When communicating instructions, think carefully about the questions you would ask, prior to doing so.
Strategic communication actually greases the wheels of operation.
Don’t believe me?
Think about your work place experience so far. How many times have you started a project, to run into a hurdle that took hours to clear up? Not because the information or guidance you needed was complicated, but because your colleague or superior was occupied with other things.
Employing effective strategic communication can save businesses thousands of hours every year, which makes it a sought-after skill.
Empathy as a skill goes hand-in-hand with effective communication. Most workplaces have been under tremendous pressure for the past 2 years. Between the impacts of the virus on our personal lives and the pressure of necessary changes to office work, it’s understandable.
Empathy as a skill can help us manage conflict when those stresses push us or our colleagues into acting out of character. It may even help us identify the impacts of stress before situations come to a head.
Empathy can also enhance our work experience outside of managing conflict. Business has grown increasingly international. Especially with the increase in work-from-home or remote-work employees. Empathy can help us to establish healthy relationships with international partners or clients quickly and does the same between superiors and colleagues.
Also, FYI- being empathetic doesn’t necessitate becoming a counselor or therapist for everyone you encounter in the office. As a matter of fact- many people may find it inappropriate. Instead, focus on being friendly, polite and effective in your communication.
The business playing field has shifted dramatically since 2020. Most businesses have adopted some sort of work-from-home policy along with stricter security measures to keep employees safe.
That’s just on the office front. Many businesses have gone to extreme lengths to restructure their arrangements with clients along the same lines. Many have adopted touch-less deliveries, low contact transactions and strict mask and social distancing measures.
The increased use of cloud processing and AI automation has put many typical office duties on autopilot or have relocated them online.
The consistent theme?
Change.
Right now, we’re in a space of constant change and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be stopping any time soon.
If you lack adaptability as an employee, you could find yourself struggling to keep up, or being left behind by your company. Do your best to build a system for quickly assessing impending change and quickly creating a plan to incorporate necessary adaptations to it.
Ask questions like:
Questions like the above can help you quickly improve your ability to adapt. Don’t limit yourself to just these though- be sure to ask as many as you can think of.
Automation has been an ever-increasing trend and businesses are harvesting an ever-increasing amount of data. Everything from web traffic, to ad click through rates, email open rates, and response rates- the list goes on.
The ability to analyze data and infer useful insights that could improve the performance of a business is a skill that’s increasing in value by the day. Improving this skill, could require you to become familiar with some new platforms, especially if your company engages in online transactions or has detailed internal and external analytics.
If you’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the information in this blog- I don’t blame you. We’re all drinking buckets of information through straws. But fear not- we can help you out! At Cydney’s Creative Solutions, we can help get your staff up to code on all the skills we mentioned above. Not to mention- we can take over all of your HR, for a fraction of what you’re paying right now.
Interested?
Send us a message at camile@ccreativesolutions.org and we’ll book a quick discovery call to find out how best we can help you out.
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