Monday, August 10, 2020
Soft skills such as creativity and collaboration—skills that benefit from participation in the arts and arts education—were found to be top priorities among managers and HR professionals surveyed for the 4th Annual Workplace Learning Report, conducted by LinkedIn Learning. The report is based on more than 6,500 survey responses from 20 countries.
The report found that “talent developers are laser focused on building soft skills—interpersonal skills that are foundational to every employee’s success, regardless of their functional role or how the technology landscape evolves. This is a smart investment, given that the shelf life of technical skills is relatively short—less than 5 years—while strong leadership, creative, and communication skills are always in demand.”
The top 5 “soft skills” identified in the report are:
- Creativity
- Persuasion
- Collaboration
- Adaptability
- Emotional intelligence
The report further defines soft skills as “the essential interpersonal skills that make or break our ability to get things done” and notes that the absence of task-oriented skills from this year’s list “signal that companies are gravitating more toward talent with strong people-oriented skills.”
Per the survey results, the youngest generation is already tracking with this trend, with 35% of Gen Z respondents interested in building their creativity skills—more than any other generation surveyed.
Read the full survey report here. The section including statistics on soft skills begins on page 32.
