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Power skills of the workforce can be considered as an accumulated body of knowledge that covers everything that is needed to be successful at work. While it is widely accepted by employers, employees, and HR managers that power skills play a crucial role in the success of any role, they are still not well understood. So what are power skills?
In its 2022 Workplace Learning Trends Report, Udemy Business introduced the phrase ‘power skills’ to represent those characteristics once referred to as ‘soft skills,’ elevating them as the top abilities required to succeed at any level inside a business.
Soft skills are more human-centered skills than qualification-based skills. These skills range from communication, social and emotional intelligence, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, professional attitude, work ethic, career management, and intercultural fluency to many more real-life practical skills. However, in contrast to its actual importance, the term ‘soft’ is frequently identified to minimize the significance of these qualities, especially in hybrid workforce management. Additionally, it downplays how challenging they are to master, and how much time and effort they require while diminishing the importance of firms investing resources in training and coaching these skills in their employees.
Furthermore, according to Forbes, soft skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, flexibility, integrity, optimism, self-motivation, and resilience, have grown to be essential success components in the workplace. This is mainly because soft skills, which cannot yet be performed by computers, have become crucial as more and more work functions are automated in the workplace.
According to Jeremy Blain, there are five critical power skills for success in the 2020s. These are:
So here’s why these power skills are important. In order to close the skills gap and keep up with the development of technology, applicants have been filling up their resumes with various technical qualifications for the past few years. However, the most in-demand abilities in an evolved workplace go beyond simply remaining technologically a step ahead. Ability to solve critical problems, cooperation, collaboration, and leadership skills are identified to be important since they offer the additional support to succeed in the workplace and the security against becoming outdated. At the same time, according to Deloitte, it is also the current notion that 30% of the work roles are to be dominated by power skills in 2030 and hard to be replicated by machines, hence making power skills an essential part of selection criteria for recruiters.
This does not imply that organizations should completely disregard technical expertise. To maximize the workforce potential, organizations must consider how well the two skills complement one another. Technical abilities or hard skills can be acquired rather quickly via different certificate programs while power skills are accumulated over time with specifically tailored continuous training programs or as a result of continuous involvement in a particular activity. Thus, by combining both hard skills and power skills, employees can maximize their potential and fuel their career progression.
Now that we know the importance of power skills, how do you develop them?
There is no hard and fast way to develop power skills. While employees need to invest time and resources in developing their power skills on their own in order to maintain competitiveness in the job market, from the organization perspective the HR department can provide the necessary support to the workforce to improve their power skills through personalized training programs. The most popular methods for training power skills within an organization include:
While the above methods can be used individually, a combination of all of the above can be utilized to help your workforce acquire the necessary skills to go above and beyond in their job roles in a comprehensive manner. Additionally, providing this training across all levels of the organization also demonstrates the dedication to both the organization's and each team member's development which will in return benefit your company culture, recruitment, and retention - read more about the impact of training on a company in our recent blog post here. Therefore, investment in training and development of technical skills and power skills of your employees will allow your organization to stand out from the competition by assisting in the development of the next generation of leaders and innovators who will shape the future of your industry.
With OrangeHRM, training your employees has never been easier. OrangeHRM offers a comprehensive learning management system (LMS) to successfully create, manage and execute employee training programs in just a few clicks. The Training Module of OrangeHRM allows you to create individual or group courses with videos, links, documents, and other content and share them with your employees so they can access these materials whenever and wherever they are. Furthermore, you can also keep track of who is participating, who has received their training and who has not, and finally, get feedback from your employees and trainers on how effective the training program was to improve the quality of your sessions.
Stay ahead of the competition with a well-trained and well-equipped workforce and a Training & Development platform/LMS that can handle all your training needs! Book your FREE demo here to find out more about the robust training capabilities and other HR functions of OrangeHRM.
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