Future skills and their impact on HR
What skills will employees need in the coming years to ensure that a company remains fit for the future? And what does this mean for the work of HR professionals? The education experts at LinguaTV have investigated this question and summarised the most important recommendations for recruiters and corporate learning experts.
What are the "Future Skills"?
Future skills are all those abilities that will become more important in the next five years in most sectors and areas of professional life. The German Stifterverband (Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany) divides Future Skills into four different categories. The technological future skills range from software development and complex IT architecture to data analytics and quantum computing, to robotics and artificial intelligence. These are mainly performed by tech specialists who can apply the latest expertise in a targeted manner.
The other three categories, on the other hand, include changing requirements that affect all employees. These include digital key competences such as digital literacy, digital learning or agile working. Many classic competences will play an even more important role in the future. This applies, for example, to solution-oriented thinking, creativity and initiative, but also to intercultural communication and language skills. As an additional category, the Stifterverband lists transformative competences that can address and solve major societal challenges. These include, for example, the ability to engage in dialogue and innovation, but also the ability to motivate many people towards a common goal.
Impact on recruiting
Since many of the Future Skills concern rather informal qualifications, recruiters will rely even more on digital competence analyses in the future. However, the increasing requirements are faced with a shortage of skilled workers. Companies will therefore have to invest significantly more resources in HR work and the war for talents. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular will have to make an effort to keep up in the competition for the best skilled workers. With flexible working hours, home offices, flat hierarchies and agile working methods, they can position themselves as attractive employers.
Nevertheless, many positions will not be so easy to fill, especially when it comes to technical experts and specialised professionals. HR managers will therefore increasingly have to recruit candidates from abroad or resort to underqualified applicants. To compensate for the lack of skills, comprehensive onboarding programmes with language courses or specialist post-qualification will play an even more important role in the future.
Effects on corporate learning
The increased requirements and the simultaneous shortage of qualified applicants ensure that, in addition to onboarding, internal training programmes will be more and more important in the future. Many companies are already planning to invest more time and resources in corporate learning. In order to recruit skilled workers and managers from within the company, it is important to identify suitable talent as well as current and future skill gaps as early as possible. This is also in the interest of employees, who will pay more attention than ever to continuous professional development. In addition to regular employee appraisals, talent managers can make use of digital and AI-supported tools for skills analysis.
Overall, corporate learning will work in a much more targeted and systematic way. Instead of "learning on the fly", there will be more use of training methods that can be optimally adapted to the individual qualification needs of the respective employee. Depending on the sector and activity, those training formats will prevail that are easiest to integrate into everyday working life, for example mobile micro-learning, webinars, or flexible teaching via video conferencing. In addition to formal training measures, informal forms of learning will also gain in importance, such as training-on-the-job, mentoring, internal company wikis or learning communities. Parallel to this, controlling and impact analysis of training measures are also likely to be significantly expanded and systematised.
Conclusion
The Stifterverband’s Future Skills Framework provides a comprehensive forecast of which key skills will become more important in the coming years. The increased demands, as well as the simultaneous shortage of qualified specialists, will present recruiters with great challenges and ensure that companies will have to invest more time and resources in corporate learning in the future. In addition to systematic talent management with targeted further training of existing employees, comprehensive onboarding offers with language courses or professional post-qualification will play an even more important role in the future.
Best Practice: A good example of how this can work in practice is the language training for empoyees at Deutsche Post DHL, which has already received several awards. One of the reasons is the successful onboarding concept! For more information on this project, we will be happy to provide you with the complete project description as a free whitepaper.
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