Workplace top priorities: soft skills training and career support

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A new survey by LinkedIn reveals that leadership, communication, and collaboration are the most important skills for employees to learn in the face of automation.

Workplace top priorities: soft skills training and career support
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Reading time 2 minutes
Reading Time: 2 minutes





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The importance of supporting employees through education is evident: 94% of workers would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career.

Photo: BigStock

LinkedIn released the results of a survey conducted on the social network that asked 4,000 professionals -1,200 talent developers, 400 managers, 200 executives, and 2,200 employees- for their insights in the trends of education in the labor market.

The study “2018 Workplace Learning Report: The Rise and Responsibility of Talent Development in the New Labor Market” reveals that the most important skills for employees to learn in the face of automation are leadership, communication, and collaboration.

The areas that talent developers are focusing on are soft skills, identifying trends to prevent skills gaps, and understanding the impact of technology. “Executives and people managers are looking to talent developers to do more, specifically increase their focus on identifying industry trends to prevent internal skill gaps.”

As other studies have shown, employees want to be trained at work. The survey reveals that 68% of them prefer to learn at work, 58% like to learn at their own pace and 49% prefer to learn at the point of need.

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The modern organization needs to meet learners where they already are—aligning development opportunities with employee aspirations, and engaging them through the platforms where they are already spending their time.

The importance of supporting employees through education is evident: 94% of workers would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career, and that means giving them time to study.

“The #1 reason employees say they are not engaging in workplace learning is because they don’t have the time. Executives and people managers agree that getting employees to make time for learning is the #1 challenge for talent development.”

According to the survey, educational efforts are more successful when managers get involved: 56% of employees would take a course that their manager suggested. Nevertheless, talent developers’ second most important challenge is getting managers involved in employee learning.

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Our survey shows that talent developers depend more on online learning solutions than ever before—not only to deliver content, but to measure learning success. They’re watching key industry trends like “microlearning” and “just-in-time learning” in order to better support the modern employee.

Regarding hard skills, LinkedIn data shows that companies are working hard to find talent in the following areas: Cloud and Distributed Computing, Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, Middleware and Integration Software, Web Architecture and Development Framework, and User Interface Design.

Participants agree that providingeducational resources is crucial for their business. They also think that development programs are a benefit for employees and that they are engaged with those programs.

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0