The importance of soft skills in the age of Artificial Intelligence
By Αntonis Hadjichristodoulou, B.Sc (Econ), MBA, Senior Financial Consultant, GrantXpert Consulting Ltd
As is well-known, executives who undertake the process of new hires in small and large companies are looking for candidates/talent who have the right skills, which are consistent with the needs and strategic goals of their business. After thorough evaluation, only candidates with knowledge and skills that can add value to the business are hired. These skills are divided into hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills are all those technical skills associated with the specific position and with each profession separately (programmer, sales promotion/marketing manager, engineer, production manager, accounting manager, legal advisor, operations’ manager, etc.). Candidates’ hard skills are measurable and are certified with the appropriate academic and professional qualifications and with the appropriate proven experience. In the current era of cutting-edge technologies, it is certain that digital and other technical/hard skills are essential to ensure the continuous implementation and integration of new technologies into the operations of any organisation.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are personal characteristics of candidates that allow them to interact and cooperate effectively and harmoniously with the rest of the staff, management, partners, customers, suppliers of a business, with the ultimate goal of achieving its goals.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to advance, it is increasingly capable of performing tasks that were once the exclusive domain of humans. In many cases, artificial intelligence can outperform humans in terms of speed, accuracy and efficiency. However, there are some critical tasks in which AI, and other cutting-edge technologies, still lag behind the human mind and judgement.
These are exactly the tasks that make the human factor and soft skills imperative for the smooth conduct of daily tasks, planning and healthy development and profitable growth of a business. In the age of technology, people will only have jobs if they can add value to a company in tasks and ways that technology cannot. Therefore, in today’s workplace, soft skills are now considered a necessary complement to hard skills. The main soft skills modern employers persistently demand for their current and foreseeable needs are the following (the list is by no means exhaustive):
- Effective Project Management
- Leadership skills
- Communication skills (written and spoken)
- Emotional Intelligence (covering empathy, mindfulness, adaptability, initiative, negotiation skills, conflict resolution, etc.)
- Critical thinking
- Analytical thinking
- Teamwork
- Problem-solving
- Creativity
- Effective Time Management.
Unlike hard skills, which relate to a specific job/area of specialisation, the key characteristic of soft skills is that they are transversal, as they are needed, and are, therefore, useful in any field or position, as well as in personal life. Other characteristics of soft skills are that, contrary to hard skills, soft skills (also called transversal skills), they are not taught in conventional schools and universities, and, by nature, are not easily measurable. The proven value and necessity of soft skills in the workplace in the era of the rapid spread of AI and other cutting-edge technologies are documented in recent studies, the key findings of which are summarised below.
The daily use and application of AI and other cutting-edge technologies is already resulting in a higher proportion of jobs relying on soft skills. And that’s because of the rapid spread of technology, which led to tasks that used to require hard skills to be rapidly performed by automation, and steadily to decrease, making soft skills more useful and necessary in the workplace. For example, a recent study by Deloitte Access Economics predicts that two-thirds of all jobs in Australia will be soft skills-based by 2030. This trend inevitably reflects needs and developments in the labour market globally.
After all, it is not enough to have the most qualified, talented employees with hard skills in the workplace when they cannot or are not willing to work with the rest of the staff as a team to contribute collectively to the achievement of company goals. As a rule, excellent results in a business bring a team and, very rarely, if ever, a scientist/professional alone, even if he or she possesses brilliant academic and professional qualifications but lacks interpersonal and other soft skills. Simply recording skills on our CV does not automatically prove we possess them. It is very important for the candidate to be able to document such skills during the recruitment interview and, even more importantly, prove them daily in practice at his/her workplace. Otherwise, he/she will either remain stagnant if eventually hired (mainly because of their hard skills) or they will be eventually fired at the end of the probationary recruitment period.
Another recent study by Harvard University, the Carnegie Institution and the Stanford Research Center found that 85 per cent of a company’s success, especially in the digital and technology age, comes from well-developed soft skills in the workplace, while only 15 per cent of success comes from technical skills and knowledge.
It’s also no coincidence that in a recent report (LinkedIn Global Talent Trends), 92 per cent of recruitment specialists said they consider soft skills to be just as important, or more important, than hard skills when it comes to recruiting and promoting employees (source: LinkedIn Global Talent Trends 2019). This highlights the growing recognition of the value of soft skills in the workforce and the need for organisations to prioritise these skills when selecting candidates and continuing their training.
Another Forbes article concludes that in the current era of AI and cutting-edge technologies, employees who, in addition to technical skills, also possess the appropriate soft skills, stand out from the rest of a company’s staff, are promoted faster and paid much more than the rest of the staff.
And if someone does not have the above soft or transversal skills, can he/she acquire them, improving significantly his employability and career prospects? Yes, he/she can, provided they want to, and try hard to do so, systematically and continuously, as explained below.
These soft skills can be significantly improved through lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is the continuous learning of both hard and soft skills that occurs outside of a conventional educational institution, such as a school or university, and never stops. Automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are advancing rapidly, dramatically changing the nature and number of jobs available. Under these developments, various surveys and studies have shown that the ability to learn continuously through reskilling and/or upskilling achieved via lifelong learning is directly linked to successful careers and well-paid jobs.
As Cypriot Member of the European Parliament Loucas Fourlas – rapporteur of the report on the “European Year of Skills 2023”, recently approved by the European Parliament – observed in a recent article: “I am one of those who believe in lifelong learning and this is because technological development never stops. Achieving lifelong learning requires cooperation with the European Parliament, Member States, social partners, public and private employment services, schools and universities. The necessity to improve skills is not age-related. It is addressed to everyone. It is aimed at students who must understand that they should choose to study a profession with good long-term future prospects so that they can work productively and be paid decently. But it is also aimed at people who are already of working age and the jobs with which they operate are automated and require new skills.”
Therefore, both students and those already employed must realise learning should no longer end when education at school/university is over. Quite the opposite. The age-old cycle of “learn, work, retire” is long gone, as people now live longer, work longer and change jobs more often, in contrast to the old philosophy of “choose a profession and work for life with an employer” that prevailed in the past.
Via the campaign “European Year of Skills 2023”, the European Commission is promoting upskilling and reskilling opportunities through micro-credentials, taking relevant initiatives and announcing relevant funding programmes in all EU countries. The primary objectives of these initiatives are (a) to address effectively the current acute skills shortage (especially digital) that European SMEs are facing, in order to enhance their competitiveness in the international market, and (b) to improve drastically the living standards of all EU citizens. Close cooperation with SMEs is, thus, of utmost importance, if those upskilling and reskilling initiatives are to keep pace with, and meet, the continuously changing digital needs of those enterprises.
Aiming to contribute to this direction, GrantXpert Consulting, European University Cyprus, CITEA and the Nicosia Chamber of Commerce and Industry are participating in the European “Level Up” project, which has as a key goal to offer a large number of practical seminars on the digital transformation of SMEs in Cyprus and Europe. Extensive market research has already been carried out in Cyprus, in order (a) to identify the existing gaps in digital skills among the executives of Cypriot SMEs, and (b) to design training programmes that aim to bridge this gap.
The project involves 13 partners from seven countries (Germany, Finland, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary and Poland), and the seminars will be announced soon, offered completely free of charge, and will be available to Cypriot companies, via the participation of their managers and other executives. All information about these seminars will be posted on the website of the Level Up https://levelup-skills.eu/ project.
The Level Up project is co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, has a total budget of €4.8 million and will run until December 2025. The first online training programmes will start in October 2023. Those interested should contact: Dr Celia Hadjichristodoulou (celia@grantxpert.eu), coordinator of Level Up, for more information and clarifications.