Skills Needed to stay relevant in the modern workplace.
This is an adaptation of an essay written during the course of my studies:
There are a variety of skills needed to stay relevant in today’s demanding, highly connected workplace. Employees are tasked with working with people across the globe, demanding competence in written communication. Through the rise of technology, employees at every level of on organization must be able to use technology, and effectively mitigate threats to an organization that arise through the use of technology as well. Lastly, due to the heightened demands on employees, time management and task prioritization become essential.
The most critical skill of today’s workforce is communication. It is critical for an employee to be able to communicate with their coworkers to complete large tasks, as working in complete solitude is not common in many industries. Workers in manufacturing have to relay the status of the product further down the line, or explain why a failure occurred and what needs to be done to remedy the situation. This extends to other industries as well. In finance, an employee is often found relaying complex information to other employees, and customers. This becomes extremely prevalent in any technical position in a company. In an Information Systems position for example, it is extremely common for an employee to explain concepts to end users that are difficult to grasp, and how it relates to their issues at hand.
The second skill needed in a modern workplace is time management. An employee is often saturated with a large workload, with some tasks bringing more value to a company than others. It is critical for an employee to estimate the time required for these tasks, and to be able to recognize the relative impact of the tasks compared to the time. If an employee cannot do this, then they risk dooming revenue generating opportunities for the employer, increasing a company’s risk exposure, or the employee risks being able to compete with their coworkers output. This last item is of particular importance from the employees’ perspective. If they cannot compete with workers who can manage heavy workloads effectively, would it not be logical and cost effective for an employer to replace them with another employee that can? Additionally, if the employee is exposing the company to the risk of financial harm through inaction on high priority tasks, would it not be prudent to terminate the employee and redistribute the workload to employees who can recognize items of high importance and act on them?
The last critical skill in today’s workforce is the ability to effectively and safely utilize the information technology that has become ubiquitous in the modern workplace. Technology has been a great addition to the workplace, it allows workers a means of communicating with people across the globe, it allows the quick storage and retrieval of vast amounts of data nearly instantaneously, and it can even assist workers with time management and task prioritization. This comes at a cost though, if a worker cannot effectively utilize the technology needed to their duties, the company loses the time that could have been spent productively. If a worker fails to recognize a threat through technology, the costs can be enormous. It has become common for criminals to use the very technology that powers a modern business to target employees throughout the corporate ladder. A practice known as phishing is one such common threat to the average worker. Phishing involves an attacker sending a crafted email to trick the employee to divulge sensitive information, whether financial info, intellectual property, or a user’s credentials to infiltrate the corporate assets. The second threat is quite similar to phishing, though it is harder for an employee to detect without training. This involves sending a malicious email or file, which launches malware in the background, usually without any way for an end user to know after the fact. This malware usually acts with the same purposes as phishing, looking to steal data, with one exception that has grown in recent years. This is known as ransomware. Instead of stealing data or infiltrating a network, it spreads as far into a network as possible, then encrypts the data irreversibly, unless a ransom is paid to the attacker. If the company cannot pay the ransom, or the attackers choose not to decrypt the data, the company has essentially lost all of their digital assets. Depending on the damage inflicted, it could be an extinction level event for the company.
It is clear that the ability to effectively communicate, manage time and projects, and navigate the digital frontier is necessary to an employee’s success in the modern workplace. Without the ability to effectively communicate, the employee cannot convey information crucial to completing their work. Without the ability to prioritize and manage time, their productivity will begin to falter, and they risk being outcompeted by their peers. If an employee cannot effectively use technology, they risk being inefficient at best, and unwittingly causing massive damage at worst. The best question to ask is, would a hiring manager choose to bring the candidate with these skills onboard, or would they choose the candidate who did not possess these skills?