Strategy & LeadershipHR StrategyFastest growing skills of 2022

Fastest growing skills of 2022

The pandemic highlighted the growing need for a skills ‘upgrade’, but knowing which skills employees need has been challenging. Coursera’s Yousef Tungen sheds light on which skills are most in demand by businesses currently

When the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, took to the stage of the AT&T Business Summit towards the end of 2019 to offer his take on how the business landscape at the time would evolve, he did not know a global pandemic was just around the corner.

As he voiced his theory that “every company would become a digital company” to those gathered in the auditorium in Dallas, Texas, he had no idea those same people would spend much of their next working year having to interact with their colleagues and clients almost exclusively by screen as office interactions would become a thing of the past.

And when Nadella hypothesised the success of these digital transformation programs would be dictated by an equation of tech adoption multiplied by tech capability, multiplied to the power of trust, he was unaware of just how much companies would come to rely on their employees adapting to new digital tools and technology-led ways of working.

Nadella knew none of that as he spoke of a future where businesses of all types, no matter how rigidly structured or tied to the traditional ways of working, would embrace an operating structure which prized proactivity above towing the line, and those who sought out employee agency above hitting key performance indicators (KPIs).

But nonetheless, much of what he said has rung true.

An era of agency and adaptability

“That era of your manager looking over your shoulder and clocking you in or out is nearly gone,” explains Yousef Tuqan, skills transformation consultant at Coursera. “There is a lot more emphasis on people being able to manage themselves and their own time.”

Tuqan has learnt from his own experience of working during the pandemic but has also seen it borne out in the data  Coursera has collected over the course of the last two years for The Job Skills of 2022 report.

The data, which was drawn from the global e-learning providers client base of 2,000 business customers, identified those skills which had most rapidly risen up the list of skills deemed most in demand by businesses and organisations.

The first subset of these, grouped under the classification of human skills, could be clearly identified as key competencies in being able to overcome many of the challenges presented by the new of working: the communication skills to overcome the absence of physical interactions while still being heard; and the change management skills to switch quickly into a new mode of operation.

So too were those things that would separate those who would flourish with the new agile way of working from those who would not, such as strong problem solving and decision-making abilities.

“That need for adaptability and to be able to deal with changing ways of working is incredibly vital,” explains Yousef Tuqan, skills transformation consultant at Coursera.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

1y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article
Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

Employee Engagement Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successf...

Remote working has impacted the way we communicate as a workforce, but striking the right balance be...

View article
How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

Culture How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

How to create a company culture capable of empower...

While new working patterns that emerged from the pandemic have earned a permanent spot in the w...

View article
WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

Leadership Learnings WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

1y Amy Kirkham

WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid wo...

Alison Noon-Jones, VP of People & Culture at Leidos UK & Europe, shares how crucial employee engagem...

View article
Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

Leadership Development Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

1y Terence Mauri

Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your...

HRD thought leader and Hack Future Lab founder Terence Mauri sets out why the biggest risk to leader...

View article

“The reality is most people are not only working unsupervised for days, but for months so the need for them to be able to manage their own time and priorities and be able to work on both short and long term assignments at the same is vital,” he adds.

A widening digital divide

Undergoing a similar growth in demand across business over the same period, were a range of digital and data-led skills which have become ever more core to how businesses across sectors must operate. Those which emerged as being of particular importance to respondents to Coursera’s survey included statistical visualisation, user experience design, and the ability to manage and understand data.

Illustrating how critical such things have become is the move by the multinational telecoms company Orange to embed digital and data skills across its entire workforce by working with Coursera to provide new forms of training.

“Because their ambition is to make Orange a data driven company, they are really focused on the need to make everybody more data literate,” explains Tuqan. “So they are working with us at a literacy feel to really make sure everybody has a basic understand around data and to be able to interrogate it and not be afraid of it.”

At Orange, this shift was prompted by a recognition that as the business moves away from physical networks and hardware towards virtualised software, so too must its skill sets evolve.

But for others, it might equally apply as a means of overcoming an ever-widening skills gap where more than half (58 percent) of all employees require new skills to continue carrying out their current jobs, according to a survey of HR leaders by Gartner published last year.

“What’s really interesting about this is that by enabling people to build this basic level of literacy is that it then allows people to raise their hand for further up-skilling and re-skilling opportunities,” says Tuqan.

“The vast majority of employers are facing a huge-talent gap when it comes to being able to recruit people who are able to work with data as their core-function, so this literacy program allows people to self-select for up-skilling into for new roles that are more data-focused.”

Was this article helpful?

Comments are closed.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

1y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

1y

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article