From Soft to Human Skills

All of us we have asked ourselves at some stage of our lives what do companies look for when choosing or promoting an employee. “A specific function can be carried out by anyone with specific technical knowledge however, its differential value will be in other skills provided to daily work”.

With this reflection starts the article “From Soft to Human Skills” published in the magazine of CEU Alumni, Views, by Paloma Sáa and Carlos Toral.

This article remembers that in the next ten years according to the report by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), over 25% of employees will be affected by automatization and 50% will require putting into practice new skills even when the position is the same.

In this sense, technology favours greater automatization of work. However, at the same time “there is an increasing demand on skills, difficult to replace, linked to communication and management of emotions. These skills are inherent to human beings and are known as soft skills” explain the authors.

These skills will become essential for any work in the next years and they are already the engine of organizations.

As explained in this article, these skills are the ones that humanize us (human skills). “Although it is true that some of them form part of the inherent features of a person, there are strategies to boost and develop them such as education, training and a corporate culture favourable for personal development”.

Aware of this reality at Universidades CEU in addition to boosting these skills in their students, it certifies them with the Open Badge, already discussed in this previous post.

A digital Badge acknowledges and certifies in a very visual manner a skill or knowledge learnt and offers visibility to the profile of students when seeking employment being shown in LinkedIn.

What are the most demanded skills in the 21^st Century?

These are the “most powerful” tools according to this article: Creativity, communication, storytelling, leadership, active listening, management of time, managing of stress, emotional intelligence and mentality oriented to success that includes critical thinking, notion of self-development, resilience and cognitive flexibility.