"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
- Charles Darwin
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The 20th century era demanded more of technical skills or functional skills ranging from IT skills, engineering skills to language-based skills. Aptitude or intelligence was the most important criteria for doing well at a job interview.
However, with the upsurge of globalization and thought leadership, businesses came to realize the importance of life skills beyond the aptitude or cognitive skills. While, the technical skills or aptitude could always be learnt with little effort on the job but, it was realized that life skills had to be put on higher priority for sustaining and growth.
The most important skills for 21st century success as enlisted by Forbes in 2018 details out a combination of hard skills of technology and engineering and soft skills, the latter often getting neglected. One of the most important skills that the article specifies is the ability to learn. Most companies invest in avid learners and enthusiastic learners. Learning is undoubtedly applicable to any job and level as it expands the horizons of thinking and further becomes a catalyst in the journey of growth.
However, with the turn of events and the pandemic, the focus towards soft skills has become sharper and mandatory. With the world of business changing drastically and rapidly, we would need people who would survive under situations of extreme uncertainty without experiencing burn out. Team working, crisis handling, stress management and resilience are other important skills needed in this pandemic.
Adaptability is the top skill in the list of critical skills that will help individuals evolve and refresh. The only constant in life—and in business—is change. To embark on new horizons in 2020, embrace the reality and make sure to show up with a positive attitude and open-minded professionalism, especially in stressful situations. One of the top soft skills required for human resource management in 2020 is adaptability. (LinkedIn Learning over 660+ million professionals and 20+ million jobs to reveal the 15 most in-demand soft and hard skills of 2020)
One of the most common side effects of the pandemic has been mental health issues. Incidents of loneliness have led to several cases. ‘We are all in it together’ instills a feeling of cooperation, team working or collaboration. Employees high on team working and collaboration often create and innovate better than independent workers. Thus, collaboration being a pre-cursor to innovation. Regular brain storming sessions, bring out innovative thinking and all want to make the organization grow. These times need cohesive bonding though employees are working from home yet collaboration over team meetings is imperative. High-functioning teams can accomplish more than any individual—and organizations know it. Learn how your strengths can complement those of your colleagues to reach a common goal.
The times to come would need crisis handlers in high percentages. The tendency to manage crisis is often a difficult skill to find. A bunch of crisis handlers can innovate and pull organizations from problems with effective problem-solving and decision-making skills. Product failures or dying industries would need to be saved and hence, organizations would largely depend on crisis handlers to bring new directions for maintenance and growth. One of the key activities of crisis handlers being strategic thinking and innovation. Food delivery companies diversifying into grocery delivery has been a classic example of how innovation has been a by-product of crisis handling. Emerging from the pandemic will be possible only when organizations and businesses invest in people with crisis handling skills.
The late 1990s and early 2000s extensively highlighted the importance of emotional intelligence. Besides self-awareness and interpersonal relationships, stress management skills hold great relevance in the current times. Situations with uncertainty often lead to stress and inability to think and function rationally. Employees with poor stress management skills often face difficulty in managing their emotions and react impulsively. The ABCDE Model of emotional intelligence has successfully helped people overcome stress rationally and manage their impulses.
While, the industry and the economy has been facing several hurdles at organizational level. But, the most impacted segment has been the workforce. As assumed, the times ahead are going to be turbulent, the future would need people who are high on resilience. Workforce who can combat with resilience will be high in demand to ensure they fight back the turbulent times and challenges. Resilience strengthens the state of our mind and our ability to endure and thrive no matter what comes our way Providing them learning programs that increase flexibility, adaptability and problem solving skills of employees is the need of the hour. Resilient employees take such opportunities to survive and thrive the change.
Hiring for soft skills will be the future of recruitment, a strategy to be embraced by all professionals. Its common knowledge in human resource practice to know that, most organizations and professionals struggle to assess soft skills. According to the global talent trends report, 5,000 professionals from 35 countries agreed that 80% soft skills are increasingly important to business success. The main reason we all need to get serious about soft skills. While, technical or functional skills have always been easy to assess and learn, it is the softer wing of competencies which need to be worked upon diligently. While online interviews and technical tests can help you understand people from a surface but other assessment techniques such as psychometric tests and assessment centers can help understand skills through situations and other tools. Psychometric testing tools can be an objective way of hiring workforce with skills required as per changing demands. Psychometric assessments can help in effective screening and reducing errors in hiring. This would also lead to reduced costs by improving the chances of hiring with the right skills. As psychometric assessments are rolled out to candidates in groups, it saves a lot of time and money for the organizations. Online psychometric tests can be administered on laptops, tablets, desktops, and mobile phones. High-end automation helps in the quick screening of candidates and thus expediting the recruitment process.
Alongside, effective hiring practices the times to come would demand organizations to also invest into skilling and upskilling. Various training and development programs would need to be designed and run to focus on bringing about changes in behavioral skills. Learning to learn is a skill that needs to be developed amongst all learners and will develop a strong learning culture for organizations, developing employees for their current and future roles. There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Covid’19 had changed the way we live, work and learn. India’s technology adoption has preponed by 2 decades making organizations and learners agile, fast and responsive to change. Psychometric tests can be used in team training and development to enhance self-awareness, understanding and team communication.
As with any major upheaval and change, there will inevitably be a period of realignment and transition. Where the pandemic is different is that once it abates and life begins to return to normal, we can expect some form of reset:
Existing industries will reopen, but it than it would have to be seen how they will perform in the short to medium term
Businesses may very well opt for increasing numbers of short term and flexible hires as the economy rebuilds
Individuals will have less freedom to move and to relocate for work, particularly those working in industries that have closed down and those living in areas most hard hit by COVID-19
Because of the enormous shift in working habits during the pandemic, we can expect longer-term trends in which the fortunes of various industries would rise and fall. The retail and real estate sectors would be prime examples of those undergoing a degree of forced contraction.
There could also be increased pressure from employees and candidates to look for corporate and office-based jobs that allow them to work for remote working. That means there are chances for forward-thinking businesses to acquire talent from right across the nation, by adapting to the way they work and interact.
Now it’s time to assess what it means for one’s own business. Is it an opportunity or a challenge? By taking a proactive approach to how one can engage with the new recruitment industry, one can stay ahead of the curve.
Industries like healthcare pharmaceutical and FMCG are in a continuous process of recruitment even in this pandemic. But industries like Mining, textile and real estate will have to gear up after this, in due course of time when things start looking up. At that point of time organizations should primarily focus on the soft skills as mentioned earlier. Providing training and development would be the need of the hour. While the government takes initiatives to recover from the pandemic, organizations too would need to invest extensively by taking the right initiatives which are sustainable and help organizations flourish and save them from perishing.
9LINKS is a consulting firm that works in the area of Organizational Development and Behavioral Assessment through Online psychometric tests. The Online psychometric test modules are meticulously developed through extensive research and development by our highly skilled and experienced team. The tests can be customized across industries and can be used for different levels and functions in organization. We carry with us an experience of 18 years in this domain in diverse fields of industry. So feel free to visit www.9links.in or mail us at info@9links.in
