Leadership, teamwork, communication, productivity, and wellness skills are essential for every employee's success, explains Sivakami S, leadership psychology expert and instructor at Udemy.
The pandemic has definitely shifted learning from classrooms, conference rooms and workshops, to tablets, laptops and smartphones.
The real question is, whether things will return to normal after the pandemic.
But that does not appear unlikely, and online learning is now a reality that is here to stay.
Packing 50 employees into a conference room for a full day technical workshop is a significant expense for most companies, not just because of the infrastructure and training costs, but also because employees are away from their daily work schedule on that day.
The same is true for leaders and managers attending leadership or management training.
Employees, managers, and leaders may skip a part of these training sessions, or, even if they do attend them, they may be distracted, and not pay full attention to what’s going on.
Digital learning platforms make this much less of a problem.
The employee, or manager, is able to go through the video lessons at their own pace, with as many breaks as needed.
They can repeat a part or all of the lesson, or rush through parts they are already familiar with.
This makes it far more likely that they will be more engaged and absorb more from the training.
Given all these benefits and conveniences, most corporate and other learning is likely to remain mostly online, even post pandemic.
If you want to upskill and move up the career ladder, the following skills sets will keep you ahead of the curve:
Technical skills
Employees are no longer limited to the job titles with which they are traditionally associated.
Technology is developing at a rapid pace, allowing for more rapid change and progress. Because everything has become remote since the pandemic, the work environment is changing faster than ever.
In this fast-paced environment, it's critical to understand which skills can help you land a job or advance in your career.
1. Cloud computing skills
Many technical workers, like web developers, must be familiar with cloud computing tools and processes.
Cloud computing knowledge helps cross-functional technical teams work efficiently and within an agile process that ships products quickly, from cybersecurity specialists to data scientists.
2. Cybersecurity
With cybercrime becoming increasingly sophisticated and widespread -- and cybersecurity class-action lawsuits and settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- businesses can't afford to ignore the security of their IT networks.
Employees working away from their office networks or on personal devices increase the risk of hackers infiltrating a seemingly secure system, making cybersecurity and corporate infrastructure especially critical concerns.
3. Data science
With the democratisation of data across organisations, which we discussed last year, data science teams are increasingly collaborating on complex data initiatives with cross-functional technical teams.
Data teams are evolving to create data architecture for customer products and internal systems that rely on machine learning and AI-powered analytics.
4. Software development
Coding experience is increasingly becoming a required skill in technical roles, regardless of job description.
It's a trend that's assisting teams in bringing products to market faster.
In a trend that began in 2020, developer roles have continued to shift, with developers taking on more responsibility for what were traditionally ops roles.
5. Data Analytics
Data Analytics skills include the capability to slice and dice the data in different ways, visualise it in different frames and forms, perform statistical analyses and analyse the results and inferences etc.
Probability and statistics skills also form a major part of this, as well as decision-making accurately judging the inferences from the various probability and statistical analyses.
Power Skills
Power skills have always been an essential component of organisational learning, and their importance has only grown as the global workforce navigates the recent changes.
Allowing employees to develop power skills in communication, collaboration, and change leadership is critical to building an agile business and a strong company culture.
Leadership, teamwork, communication, productivity, and wellness skills are essential for every employee's success.
These abilities aren't just nice to have; they're essential. They are necessary for transforming the workplace.
After all, these are core strengths that all employees require, regardless of whether they work in finance, technology, administration, sales, or marketing.
Some of them are as follows:
6. Communication and teamwork
In 2020, the rise of remote work exposed us to the ups and downs of video conferencing, and pioneered the idea of Zoom fatigue, which occurs when our brains become overburdened by staring at ourselves on screen all day.
Whether in-person, virtual, or hybrid -- however your workforce is reportedly cooperating -- communication and teamwork skills remain critical.
Once employees and leaders realise that cooperation, teamwork and collaboration are an integral part of the company culture, and are recognized and rewarded, then this will be further reinforced.
7. Leadership and management
Management and leadership are for everyone, not just employees with the title "manager."
Businesses that provide leadership training to all employees, regardless of managerial aspirations, outperform those that do not in terms of revenue growth, operating margin, and return on equity by 4.2 times.
8. Project management
The increasing complexity of work projects -- plus the challenges of working remotely -- mean project management is an even more complex in-demand skill.
Interest in efficiency-boosting tactics like Scrum and Agile has grown dramatically over the past four years. And it's not only technical teams that benefit from project management skills.
Project management and operations knowledge is useful across any industry, from construction to health care to marketing.
Tactical Skills
Just as all employees require power skills training, all employees should be encouraged to develop tactical skills that will help them excel in their role's day-to-day functions.
Some of the important tactic skills are:
9. Business intelligence
Data literacy has become the current business language; just as basic computer skills have progressed from being highly specialised to being required for everyone. However, many businesses are currently lacking in their understanding of data and its applications.
Only 21% of workers are confident in their data skills.
Funding in business intelligence (BI) software that enables any employee to become data-driven is meaningless unless it is accompanied by deliberate training on how to use the information provided by these tools.
Consumption of tableau and data visualization software courses has increased in the last year as organisations strive to improve their employees' data literacy.
Obtaining certifications in tools such as Tableau validates employees' knowledge of the subject while also providing opportunities for career advancement.
10. Design and UX
Customers' first impressions of your app, product, or website last a long time.
If your brand's layout lacks a cohesive visual tale or your product's user experience (UX) isn't convenient, even the world's most talented tech and marketing teams won't be able to help you maintain users.
To create experiences that keep customers coming back, today's design teams collaborate across disciplines such as user research, marketing, accessibility, and information architecture.
Skills will be the new currency in the coming years.
Digital marketing and social media skills have also shot up in demand, and will continue to see a growth, in 2022, and beyond.
As global, and local, environments, and market demands, change dynamically, new skills, like positivity, resilience, versatility, adaptability etc. will also become of immense value, especially for leaders and managers.
This will enable them to face rapidly changing environments, and demands, and make them capable of using positive psychology to adapt to these new situations, and bounce back from any failures, disappointments, and setbacks, to learn from them and use these learnings to look for new opportunities, with a positive mindset.
These skills, even if not present naturally, can often be developed in employees and leaders, with the proper training!
