Udemy Business’ 2022 Workplace Learning Trends report offers us some remarkable insights. Our learning trends analysis is drawn from data on what employees are learning on our platform across our thousands of customers around the world. A closer look at the most in-demand skills in the workplace reveals that one of the most notable trends in learning today is the emergence of power skills, once called “soft skills.”
For employees to adapt and excel, they need to develop skills related to communication, collaboration, and leadership. These power skills are essential to building agile, productive organizations and strong company culture. They exemplify the value humans themselves add to the workplace — the impact their traits and skills have in producing business outcomes.
Power skills are required in almost every industry, position, and discipline. At a time when many executives are facing skills gaps in their organizations and grappling with the Great Resignation, a focus on power skills better enables them to bridge those gaps, both when bringing on new employees and also while developing existing employees’ abilities.
According to Josh Bersin, HR analyst and founder of the Josh Bersin Company, we need to rethink our categorization of hard and soft skills: “Hard skills are soft — they change all the time, are constantly being obsoleted, and are relatively easy to learn. Soft skills are hard — they are difficult to build, critical, and take extreme effort to Let’s Stop Talking About Soft Skills: They’re Power Skills obtain.” While power skills are difficult to acquire, they are the behavioral skills that give employees power at work. They are critical in every role and highly transferable across projects, departments, industries, and careers.
When workers have strong power skills, it enables them to turn outputs into outcomes, taking what is created — often by automated systems — and adding essential value beyond the immediate product of that work. This includes interpreting results and making decisions about how to best leverage information to accomplish business objectives.
Power skills also enable employees to better navigate their relationships with their employers and their careers. These are key power skills areas where organizations and their employees are focusing their learning, with the following areas showing the greatest jump in the level of learning from 2020 to 2021:
In an era when organizations — and the workforce — are grappling with how to collaborate effectively in new operational frameworks like hybrid and remote work, communication and teamwork skills are at a premium. These skills are necessary for workers to collaborate successfully, communicate effectively, and navigate the complexities of virtual relationships.
Data shows a significant growth in demand over the past year in the following power skills, with the growth occurring in course consumption on the Udemy Business (UB) platform from 2020 to 2021:
● +250% increase in assertiveness skills
● +148% increase in facilitation skills
● +129% increase in team-building skills1
The increased consumption of these skills speaks to the importance workers, managers, and leaders alike are placing on developing power skills capabilities to help navigate today’s unique work challenges.
Developing strong leaders is a critical area for organizations, as it’s incumbent upon leaders to create a work environment where employees feel engaged, empowered, accepted, and valued within their companies. Managers, in turn, need to provide the consistent structure, accountability, and communication required to share ongoing updates across the organization.
When it comes to leadership and management skills, these are the categories that saw the greatest growth in course consumption on the UB platform from 2020 to 2021:
● +119% increase in strategic thinking skills
● +108% increase in coaching skills
Leadership skills can be learned, and strong leaders are instrumental in driving business outcomes and creating organizational success. Great leaders help build strong workplace cultures, strengthen employee engagement, and can increase earnings per share by 147%.
Change management is a critical leadership skill, as today’s work environment is in a constant state of flux. Like other power skills, effective leadership capabilities are complex and often difficult to develop. Organizations that employ a variety of learning formats and modalities make learning more impactful, engaging, and effective. Their efforts to develop strong leaders are more likely to see success.
Today’s workforce is going through a period of unprecedented change, and power skills are foundational to being able to navigate this transformation effectively. Power skills are more difficult to acquire because they are behavioral skills learned through formal and informal learning experiences, but they bring extraordinary value to workers in every role. Executives and business leaders who invest in their senior managers’ leadership skills help develop strong leaders who influence employee satisfaction, retention, and engagement to drive better organizational outcomes.
Download the Udemy Business 2022 Learning Trends report to learn more about these findings or to see Udemy Business in action, click here.
This post was created by Udemy Business with Insider Studios.
