There has been a fundamental shift in what skills are valued in the workplace since we started to commonly use Copilot, ChatGPT and other AI tools to enhance our work. Certain skills like writing (for transparency, I have not used AI to write this), video creation, data analysis can now be almost entirely outsourced to AI; or at the very least the AI does the heavy lifting.
The UK is also seeing a significant impact of AI on job losses Link Broken and more than a quarter of Britons fear losing their jobs to AI over the next 5 years Link Broken.
So, with this backdrop, what skills do we need to remain employable and businesses to be competitive?
It’s the skills that AI can’t do. The uniquely human skills – soft skills or power skills. The skills of emotional intelligence, communication, influence, teamwork, creativity, adaptability, problem-solving and critical thinking.
These skills have always been important, and us L&D professionals have been supporting people to develop these skills for years – they are the basis of most leadership programmes – but it is in the current AI-enhanced world, where these skills differentiate us from what can be done by a server in Palo Alto that make them even more important.
There are clear reasons why such skills are needed more than ever.
Organisational Success & Productivity
Many managers say that gaps in soft skills are starting to slow their teams down. One study found that 58% of managers believe their company’s success is held back by poor soft skills Link Broken – a concern that’s especially strong in fast-growing organisations.
Competitive Advantage
Even OpenAI researchers have noted that while technology can take over repetitive tasks, it still falls short when it comes to creativity, empathy, and the nuances of human communication. So, competitive advantage comes from hiring and developing people to be even better at these skills.
Long-Term Retention and Culture Fit
Employees with strong soft skills help build positive workplace cultures, improve team cohesion, and reduce conflict, all of which are critical for retention and innovation.
Future of Work
With AI only becoming better at many of what we have traditionally thought of as hard skills – coding, data analytics, video creation – employers will seek out people with these types of skills less and look more for the creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking skills that will enable them to benefit most from using AI tools.
And how do we develop those uniquely human skills?
Through creating experiences.
At The Experience Works we are particularly keen on developing these skills in those early careers people who are going to be in the workplace through the huge tech-fuelled changes that will no doubt happen in the next 20+ years and two of our current projects demonstrate the power of experiences to do that.
Building confidence in influencing
We are working with a construction company who wanted to ensure that their Graduate and Apprenticeship schemes enabled people to have influential conversations with more experienced colleagues and clients. To do this, we created three scenarios that Early Careers people may face and gave them three 1-1 Practice Room sessions in which they could try out the conversations they need to have and get feedback to improve. “I feel that I've really gained confidence in just this one session in knowing that I can tackle situations that aren't easy.”
Improving Networking Confidence to Develop Business
With an Engineering company, we are supporting their Graduates to have better networking conversations so that they can identify and develop new business opportunities. This is an experience in which 10 of our actors play clients of the company at a networking event and they are given specific pieces of information that could lead to new business opportunities. The graduates have to network with the ‘clients’ and try to get that information which will only be revealed if they quickly establish a relationship and ask the right questions. “That felt so real.”