2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and having to adjust to a “new normal”.
The pandemic is causing a shift in skills
The pandemic has meant people have had to adapt their working life and has quickly changed how businesses get work done. According to McKinsey’s global survey on reskilling, many organisations massively prioritised the development and retention of soft skills.
The shift to remote work when the pandemic began was abrupt and organisations had to quickly implement virtual working strategies which further highlighted the importance of hard and especially soft skills in the workplace. While hard skills are important in identifying the abilities needed in performing a particular job, soft skills such as social, emotional, and technological skills are becoming more crucial as intelligent machines take over repetitive, physical, and basic cognitive tasks.
McKinsey identified that HR professionals are finding difficulty in recruiting candidates who have the necessary soft skills for an automating world. So, the focus not only needs to be on identifying candidates with the correct skills for the job but also in reskilling employees to better fit new business processes.
2022 - The year of the soft skill
Understanding what skills are present in your organisation and team can better help you understand what kind of performance is possible and what needs to be improved.
Cognisess platform and technology will help support your business in gaining a greater understanding of people’s hard and soft skills so that candidates and employees can better represent their potential and talent across current and future job roles.
Alex Hultin, who heads up Cognisess’ Data Science team has been leading the development of the Skills Mapping tool. It will allow companies to use information provided by the user to understand one’s professional interests, competencies, and skills. This profile understanding is then compared to job roles to understand how suitable they are for the position. It provides a high-fidelity approach that can provide quick insights on candidate-role suitability.
Soft skills are fundamental to our ability to work together in multi, inter, and transdisciplinary teams. It enables us to become effective communicators, overcome organisational and human challenges, and provides us with the tools necessary to overcome real-world, complex problems.
Soft skills allow us to go beyond individual efforts and move towards integrated human systems.
Alex Hultin, Doctor of Philosophy, PhD Mechanical Engineering
By using a combination of neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning, we deliver data driven insights to get the very best out of your people.
Information drawn from multiple McKinsey & Co reports:
McKinsey & Co: Skill Shift: Automation and the future of workforce
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