Hard and soft skills needed for the future jobs: an overview

Workforce upskilling is one of the significant 2023 HR trends. The practical use of upskilling is tremendous, as it helps organizations diversify their workforce’s skills and meet challenges that come from external talent markets, digitalization trends, and so on.

What are the top job skills that businesses pursued the most in their employees? In this article, we’ll deep dive into the top skills of the future everyone will need by 2025 and beyond.

A recent study shows that half of the adult population in the Netherlands is proficient in digital literacy. This country is a leader among other European Union countries, where the average percentage of digital literacy skills is 33%.

Digital literacy includes a wide range of competencies: computer problem-solving skills (software and hardware), social media, communication tools, online security and data privacy management, information search skills, and more.

The digital literacy tendency isn’t surprising, considering digitalization across all kinds of industries. According to the “No longer optional: employer demand for digital skills” report, at least 82% of online postings in the UK require basic digital skills. Moreover, the same report indicates the correlation between the level of digital literacy and wages. For example, job roles that required basic digital literacy skills are paid up to 29% higher than job roles that don’t have this requirement.

According to Forbes, up to 95% of surveyed businesses admit they need to manage unstructured data (as a rule, it’s text-heavy information like results of surveys, sales chats) at their organizations.

This situation resembles a snowball: the more data (structured and unstructured) organizations accumulate, the more they need analysts and specialists who can manage, process, and interpret that data.

However, the pharma and chemical industries aren’t the only ones that require their employees to be proficient with data skills. A recent PwC report states that by the end of 2023, 69% of employers will require data science and data analytics skills from their candidates.

Data visualization is another essential skill gaining traction among job postings. Specialists in data visualization interpret the data and organize it into meaningful dashboards, graphs, charts, tables, etc. These efforts pay back: companies that invest in data visualization capabilities get around $13 on every dollar spent.

Professionals in HR training and development agree that non-recurrent learning programs like one-day workshops don’t prove their efficiency. Instead, it makes sense to devise programs based on continuous learning and putting gained knowledge into practice.

Joe Miller, vice president of learning design and strategy at BenchPrep, says: “In today’s fast-paced society, it’s important for professionals to keep their skills up-to-date. After passing a certification exam, an employee would still engage in occasional learning activities over an indefinite period of time within that certified subject matter to maintain mastery.”

In this paradigm, self-learning, peer-to-peer learning, and micro-learning strategies in the workplace are gaining popularity.

In the “Soft skills for business success” report, Deloitte analysts estimated that by 2030, almost two-thirds of all occupations would be based on soft skills. There’s a particular reason for that: automation and digitalization of working processes. They push employees to develop and deepen their soft skills to stay ahead of competitors and bring value to their organizations.