It’s a general rule that when someone says things used to be better in their day, they generally weren’t.
Despite newspaper alarmism, the world we live in is safer, cleaner, and healthier than most points in human history. Where the internet is concerned, however, we appear to be at a genuine crossroads between the old and the new.
Nobody can deny the impact of the internet and digital devices has been as negative as it has positive. For all the unlimited information and easy communication, we’re also shouldering the burden of information overload, ‘fake news’, and phone addiction. This has made itself felt in the business world, where many recruiters believe soft skills have suffered as a result of our online habits.
With AI encroaching on every sector, the value of real human connection and communication is becoming more valuable than ever. So is there really a dearth of soft skills among junior jobseekers and employees, and is this an existential threat to businesses? The answer may be yes – but it’s also not beyond the ability of businesses to solve.
The erosion of soft skills
It’s undoubtedly true that younger people bring unique skill sets and experiences to the workplace, which can be to the immense benefit of businesses. Beyond the obvious stereotype of social media prowess, the insights and attitudes of young Millennials and Gen Z can help to broaden the perspective of businesses, allowing them to make better decisions. They can also lend more legitimacy to businesses taking a stance on social issues, something that’s increasingly important to younger audiences.
What many employers worry is being lost, however, is soft skills. With younger generations having grown up entirely online and on phones, they tend to be much more comfortable messaging people, and less comfortable speaking to them. This may lead to better email literacy – an underrated skill in itself – but it can create other issues. Talking to clients, customers, and colleagues directly is still a fundamental part of most businesses, and these skills can often be lacking.
This is borne out by a wealth of research and testimony. As far back as 2018, McKinsey & Company were highlighting a growing gap in soft skills among graduates, with communication issues cited by employers. This trend was only intensified by the isolation of the pandemic, with consulting firms including Deloitte and PwC now offering soft skills training for Gen Z workers. The CEO of Channel 4 has claimed Gen Z lacks the skills to work alongside people with differing opinions, while a recent Wall Street Journal article quoted business leaders as saying that Gen Z workers were uncomfortable communicating ‘offline’, as well as generally uninclined to work hard.
Gen Z bites back
Talk to young people, and you will hear a very different story. An Adobe survey of more than 1,000 members of Gen Z found that almost half wanted more training in hard skills, feeling that their education had left them underprepared for the world of work. The skills most commonly felt to be lacking were digital skills, something that might seem counterintuitive for the first fully digital generation. Yet as we’ve discussed before, computers are increasingly alien to many young people, who use their phones for most tasks.
On top of this, the growing mental health crisis amongst young people in particular is evidencing itself at work. Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that 46% of Gen Z felt stressed or anxious at work all or most of the time, with a figure of 39% for millennials. As for being unable to work with people of differing opinions, many would argue that they are perfectly capable of talking to people with different views; they just don’t want to. As well as working for a socially responsible company, many young people want to work with responsible people, and are less tolerant of views or behaviour they see as objectionable.
Indeed, Gen Z may not even be arguing about the value of soft skills over formal qualifications. The number of university applicants in the UK fell this year for the first time since 2018, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has moved to cap the number of applicants for ‘low value’ degrees that offer limited job prospects. With many millennials still paying back their student loans a decade or more later, the growing feeling among Gen Z and Gen Alpha is that university no longer offers value for money.
The value of formal qualifications
There is evidently still a huge demand and requirement for formal qualifications, even if the most in-demand qualifications have changed. From computer programmers and AI specialists to doctors and nurses, the skills shortage is hitting skilled and low-skilled work alike. Meanwhile, the WEF’s Future of Jobs 2023 report cites analytical & creative thinking as the two most in-demand skills among employers. These are exactly the skills further education tends to develop, and which AI is unlikely to overtake humans in.
Beyond this, formal qualifications provide a level of certainty to employers about the knowledge of applicants. Accurately measuring the skill level of applicants is one of the most difficult parts of hiring, and many industries rely on consistency between university courses to judge the skills of graduates. While moving to an ability and experienced-based model may be beneficial in some areas, it may lead to more unsuccessful or difficult hires, where an untested skills gap needs to be addressed.
What’s clear in all of this, however, is that there’s no lack of desire from young people to learn. The uncertainty is over what qualifications are actually valuable, and how to get into careers that teachers may not know exist. Schools have often been criticised for teaching unpractical skills rather than practical ones, and a fall in university applications may only intensify that issue. Options such as BTECs and apprenticeships can help, but they are only applicable to certain career tracks, and demand that students identify their chosen career early.
Train and gain
The issue then seems less that young people have an inherent deficit in soft skills, and more that the route to any given career is obfuscated. The pandemic may not have helped with the development of soft skills, but Gen Z feels equally unequipped with hard skills, and that the skills they do have aren’t always recognised. Instead of identifying these issues and rectifying them through training, some business leaders seem to want to shift the blame onto someone else.
Soft skills may benefit from being more of a focus in schools, or indeed in homes, where kids might benefit from a little less screen time. But businesses can’t rely on societal and systemic changes to improve their lot. Instead, they might flash back to when they were a startup, and dependent on developing less experienced talent. Anyone complaining about a lack of skilled applicants might have to consider how they can impart skills on them.
Soft skills training is an easy win, and something businesses may want to extend to all employees, as even those who feel confident in their soft skills may have developed certain bad habits. But the key with any employee is to identify the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. This not only allows you to conduct effective CPD, but allows you to harness the skills that they are proficient in. After all, it may be that an employee who lacks some soft skills is talented enough in other areas to render the training unnecessary.
There may be weight to the argument of a soft skills shortage, but this needn’t incite panic. For all that some younger employees might lack soft skills, this is a generation that’s better educated and more qualified than any preceding it. As doubts creep in about the merit of those qualifications, however, the onus is on businesses and organisations to provide certainty – reinforcing the benefits of formal qualifications, and addressing the gap in soft skills themselves.
