Top skills of the future across regions and industries

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Empathy, followership, curiosity, and drive appear to be in shorter supply, not featuring in the top three list for any region.

Integrity, generosity, and ethics: These skills have emerged as the top three skills of the future in Asia, according to research.

As identified by global thought leader Josh Bersin, and cited in SHL's whitepaper titled Skills of the future and where to find them, these skills – defined as PowerSkills – are skills that are not technical, but rather, behavioural, and are becoming increasingly important. Thus, it was added, being able to recruit workers with these unique skills has become critical.

In that vein, the whitepaper detailed these skills of the future and what it means when one is equipped with these skills, built based on Josh Bersin's Focused PowerSkills Framework:

• Optimism: Stays positive when facing difficulties rather than dwelling on negative events.
• Curiosity: Is open to and experiments with new ideas.
• Tenacity: Concentrates on tasks over a long period of time without getting distracted.
• Flexibility: Accepts and adapts to change.
• Integrity: Keeps promises and refrains from disclosing confidential information.
• Learning: Absorbs new information and masters new techniques easily.
• Generosity: Shares information and offers guidance and assistance to others to help them succeed.
• Drive: Sets demanding goals and works hard to achieve them.
• Ethics: Upholds ethical standards regardless of external pressure or competing agendas to advance either personal or organisational objectives.
• Followership: Willingly accepts direction from others.
• Empathy: Takes steps to show compassion and support for others and is sensitive to others’ emotional needs.
• Time management: Manages own time and delivers work on schedule.
• Kindness: Shows courtesy and is polite to others.
• Teamwork: Focuses on team goals.
• Communication: Understands spoken information; speaks clearly and understandably; presents with confidence; gauges audience reaction, interest, and understanding, and adjusts communication style or content accordingly.

Top three skills of the future, by region

In addition to the Asia data above, the whitepaper showcased the top three skills identified in other regions:

India

• Teamwork
• Generosity
• Optimism

Middle East

• Time management
• Optimism
• Ethics

North America

• Ethics
• Tenacity
• Time management

Oceania

• Integrity
• Generosity
• Communication

Central and South America

• Integrity
• Optimism
• Ethics

Africa

• Generosity
• Optimism
• Learning

As seen above, while each region had its unique strengths, optimism, integrity, and generosity feature among the common skills seen across all. On the other hand, empathy, followership, curiosity, and drive appear to be in shorter supply, not featuring in the top three list for any region.

That said, it was noted that although these skills appear to be in short supply at the regional level, they showed up as key strengths within industries. For example, drive appears to be particularly abundant in the banking & financial industry, and empathy in the healthcare industry.

In line with that, the report next showcased the most common skills identified by people surveyed in each industry:

Top three skills in individual industries

Retail

• Empathy (42%)
• Kindness (42%)
• Generosity (40%)

As shared in the report, compared to other industries, candidates for the retail industry are 40% more likely to score highly on empathy and kindness, and 35% more likely to score highly in generosity.

Healthcare

• Kindness (38%)
• Empathy (36%)
• Flexibility (36%)

According to the findings, candidates for roles in the healthcare industry are 25% more likely to have high levels of kindness, and 20% more likely to have high levels of empathy and flexibility compared to other industries.

Banking & financial services

• Time management (37%)
• Drive (34%)
• Tenacity (34%)

Candidates in this industry are 33% more likely to have strong time management, 22% more likely to have strong drive, and 20% more likely to have high tenacity compared to other industries.

Manufacturing

• Tenacity (38%)
• Drive (37%)
• Ethics (37%)

This industry's candidates are 25% more likely to have tenacity, and 22% more likely to have ethics, and drive respectively.

Energy

• Curiosity (50%)
• Flexibility (47%)
• Learning (45%)

Per the findings, candidates for the energy industry are 67% more likely to have high curiosity, 56% more likely to have high flexibility, and 48% more likely to have the learning PowerSkill.

Telecommunications

• Empathy (39%)
• Kindness (37%)
• Generosity (36%)

Finally, candidates for this industry are 34% more likely to have high curiosity, 25% more likely to have the learning PowerSkill, and 22% more likely to have high flexibility.

Overall, the report noted an increase in the number of candidates scoring in the high range with tenacity, kindness, and time management, showing the biggest increases. In particular, these skills of the future saw increases of between 32% and 48% more candidates scoring in the high range in 2023 compared to 2021.

If you are keen to gain insights into unique and innovative L&D strategies, gather your team to attend HRO's flagship L&D conference, Learning and Development Asia - taking place in Singapore and Malaysia in September 2023. Click through the links to find out more or contact us here!

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