As more time passed and the requirements of the era shifted, there was an ever-increasing demand placed on the amount of expertise that workers possessed. The process of making a steam engine was far more difficult than the process of handcrafting a shoe, and the same can be said about the construction of a spacecraft in comparison to a steam engine.
The COVID-19 epidemic has altered the manner in which we think about the skills that will be necessary for the future in a variety of settings, including virtual business boardrooms, industry think tanks, and HR conclaves. Now more than ever, traits such as resiliency, agility, and empathy are in demand, and it is anticipated that they will continue to take centre stage for some time. Yet, these behavioural talents did not magically manifest themselves on title slides overnight. Why, therefore, have they been brought up in the conversation about business so infrequently in the past? And why hasn’t there been many efforts put into developing people’s behavioural competencies?
A glance at the past will tell you why the Industrial Revolution, which started in England in the last century of the 18th century, soon changed the ecosystem across the globe in an irreversible way – from a workplace of manually crafted goods to production that is mechanised and based on assembly lines for a wide variety of products. The creation of goods in large quantities started to be the norm. This method did not call for innovation, uniqueness, or creative thinking on the part of its workforce; rather, it expected repetition, consistency, and most importantly, perfect discipline from its workforce. The division of labour led to a narrowing of job descriptions as well as skill requirements. These occupations were duplicated on a wide scale, which resulted in the creation of roles inside the organisations. It should come as no surprise that this necessitated a command-and-control style of administration, with the supervisor doling out instructions and regiments of industrial employees mechanically carrying them out.
As more time passed and the requirements of the era shifted, there was an ever-increasing demand placed on the amount of expertise that workers possessed. The process of making a steam engine was far more difficult than the process of handcrafting a shoe, and the same can be said about the construction of a spacecraft in comparison to a steam engine. The operational procedure became more complicated, which resulted in the creation of new jobs. Nonetheless, despite the fact that these professions needed more advanced abilities, on the whole, they were still very tightly defined. A sense of aesthetics is helpful for programmers to have, but it is not a need for them to be successful. That, on the other hand, is expected of visual designers, who, in turn, could be excellent people-managers but are not obliged to be, and so on and so forth.
The extraordinary amount and velocity of adoption of emerging technologies, powered by automation and machine learning, are only very lately causing a seismic change in the demand for skills that are necessary in the workplace. This transition is expected to have a significant impact on the labour market. As regular, repetitive professions are being automated away, those that are left and the new vacancies that are being created demand not only a deeper understanding of technology, but also a broad variety of higher-order behavioural abilities. The ongoing epidemic throughout the world has further hastened the tectonic shift that has been occurring in demand.
The difficulty of the situation is complicated by the fact that, even having the very best of intentions, businesses have a propensity to dilly-dally when it comes to beginning any initiative that is centred on exclusively human-centric capabilities. So, what are some of the factors that contribute to the complexity of the endeavour of investing in human capital?
The solution is composed of three parts.
To begin, there is the difficulty of conducting behavioural assessments and training. The identification and evaluation of behavioural talents is more difficult compared to their domain or technical counterparts. Although there are a variety of precise and dependable psychometric instruments, it takes a significant amount of specialised knowledge to extract insights from the findings and use them to develop human-centric efforts. When it comes to devising training interventions, delivering them in an effective manner, and correctly assessing progress, the work at hand becomes significantly more complicated. It is possible that training whole departments or cohorts of employees at a major international corporation in a new programming language, new accounting standards, or new compliance procedures will be a challenging and difficult process. On the other hand, it is nothing in compared to the complexity and nuances of a project that aims to increase resilience at the individual, departmental, and organisational level (for which the training approach and efficacy are still growing).
Second, the way in which we think about initiatives that are fundamentally centred on people, such as change management. We still have a tendency, even twenty decades into the 21st century, to conceive in terms of antiquated, mechanical concepts. A business is a complicated machine, and its workers, who are all rational agents, are the gears that make it work. As contrast to being a phenomena that occurs all the time, change is more of an occasional event. So, if one has access to sufficient data and sufficient analytical capacity, one may appropriately handle a change. There is a plethora of frameworks and tools. The stress is placed on predictability, precision, and the rigour of the procedure. But, there is very little to no attention paid to all of the human beings who will be impacted by it.
Third, the emphasis that is placed on scientific fields, technological fields, engineering fields, and mathematical fields within our educational system (STEM). This methodology was first proposed in the United States in the middle of the 1990s as a response to a shortage of technical and engineering skills. Since then, it has spread across the globe, especially in the information technology industry and industries that are closely related to it, helping to support the technology revolution. Yet, the formerly gleaming blue-eyed sector has lost some of its lustre, and businesses in every industry are seeing an increase in the need for behavioural expertise. Yet even in today’s world, so-called “hard talents” continue to take precedence over “soft skills” in academic curriculum, to the detriment of the latter. In light of the new paradigm, the STEM model, which has been of such great use to us in the past, is no longer enough. On the other hand, because of this same pedagogical heritage, leaders who have been armed with highly developed analytical abilities but not behavioural ones find themselves in a conundrum. This puts them in a difficult position.
It is not necessary to have the most advanced frameworks and toolkits in order to have a programme of investment in human capital that is genuinely effective. It’s the one that demonstrates a true sensitivity to the requirements of other people, the guts to proclaim, “Employees First!”, and the will to see things through to their conclusion and keep their word. And to act in this manner not because one is forced to, but rather out of complete and utter conviction.
