Last year online learning platform Coursera released their first Global Skills Index to try and understand the changing nature of skills development around the world. The report builds upon the Skills Benchmarking tool developed by the company to help organizations not only understand the skills they have, but how their workforce compares with their peers.
Last year’s report revealed that European countries led the way in the development of skills, with the companies in the United States appearing to focus their energy more on recruiting the talent they need rather than developing it. The outbreak of Covid-19 has changed most things, so is the same true of the skills landscape?
The first notable trend from the report was the relative insulation provided by high skills to the impacts of Covid-19, both from an individual and organizational perspective. In many ways, this should come as no surprise, not least because previous research has highlighted how low-skilled jobs are disproportionately more likely to be affected by the Covid-19 lockdown measures, because they tend to have to be performed face-to-face and therefore cannot be conducted remotely, as so many knowledge-based jobs can.
Organizational health
What the report does make clear, however, is the clear link between skills and organizational performance. Cousera’s data shows that across all skill domains, the link between proficiency and stock returns is 43%, with this level of return largely enduring during the Covid crisis.
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They suggest this might in part be because digital skills have been so important in effectively responding to the crisis in the short-term, and will be so important in transforming businesses to respond to the aftermath of the crisis in the longer-term. They believe this transformation will include everything from managing change to the automation of processes that can no longer be safely performed in person.
“We’re likely to see a huge amount of disruption in the labor market in the coming years, with existing jobs lost to economic and technological factors, and new jobs created that will require new skills,” Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera told me recently. “It’s really sad that many of the jobs that are vulnerable to automation are also vulnerable to Covid-19, so if you look at industries like retail, travel and leisure, and food services, they might not come back, so you’ve got to reskill people to take advantages of the opportunities of the future.”
Skills for the post-Covid world
Data from the UK’s Institute of Coding suggests that this is taking place. They revealed a tenfold increase in enrolments since lockdown measures were introduced in March, with a significant number of these students either actively looking for new work, or existing students looking to bolster their qualifications before entering the labor market for the first time.
This surge not only reflects the ongoing interest in digital skills development, but also some of the softer skills that I’ve identified as key in past articles. For instance, courses in communication, interpersonal skills, and collaborative working were all hugely popular. This trend was reinforced by the Coursera data, which revealed a 1,200% increase in enrollments onto courses in areas such as mindfulness and stress management.
Despite this growth, focus remains on business, technology, and data science skills among organizations, with around two-thirds of the enrollments by governments and companies being in courses teaching these subjects.