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By Aman Kidwai
Workplaces Editor
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While technical skills remain popular for people looking to improve their career prospects, their ability to communicate and relate with others is also important, and maybe even a growing area of need given the way work has evolved over the last five years.
Based on benchmarking data from companies that provide corporate training programs and courses for workers, people are understandably interested in upskilling on emerging technology. But they're also in hot pursuit of skills like assertiveness, incident management and leadership, according to Coursera and TalentLMS.
"One of the most exciting side effects of the [generative] AI and digital transformation revolution is that there is this double down on the things that make us human," Trena Minudri, chief learning officer at Coursera, told Newsweek. "That goes to things like empathy, resilience, self awareness, listening skills, for everyone—not just managers and leaders."
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In a November 2024 survey of U.S. employees by TalentLMS, 68 percent said interpersonal skills will be important in 2025. When considering employees' training priorities by generation, the TalentLMS study found that soft skills and "leadership and management" were a top three priority for all four generations (Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, baby boomers).
"Almost every functional leader or every leader now is kind of an HR leader," Nikhil Arora, CEO of Epignosis Learning Technologies, parent company of TalentLMS, told Newsweek. "If, as a leader, you don't know how to manage people, how to nurture people, how to build your talent force on your own, regardless of the HR department, I think your odds of success will get diminished."
The term "soft skills" is becoming a bit outdated given the heightened importance of communication, collaboration and navigating difficult conversations. Others prefer the term "power skills" or interpersonal skills, with a focus on collaboration, communication and being a better leader. Learning and development (L&D) functions across a variety of industries are adapting new models to build these abilities within their organization.
Coursera calls them "human skills" and points out that they represent three of the ten fastest-growing subjects among enterprise users, based on a December report. Assertiveness was fourth, stakeholder communications seventh and business communication was the ninth fastest-growing skill.
"Human skills are essential, as 84 percent of managers believe new employees must possess and demonstrate the ability to communicate in a professional manner and articulate their ideas. Gen Z lags behind employees and job seekers here, with 71 percent of Gen Z workers finding it difficult to speak up and contribute in meetings," then-CEO of Coursera Jeff Maggioncalda wrote in a December article (he retired at the beginning of this year).
Tech skills are also in high demand, with particular interest around GenAI. Coursera reported that enrollment in GenAI courses increased 866 percent from 2023 to 2024, and that over half of those learners are in India, Mexico or Colombia. Additional AI-related courses in computer vision, PyTorch and machine learning doubled over the previous year and were also among the 10 fastest-growing subjects on Coursera.
The TalentLMS and Coursera data also highlighted the emerging interest in HR and HR-adjacent skills, including workplace technology, stakeholder communications, workforce development and human capital. Other business skills whose courses are growing quickly included Microsoft PowerPoint, project management and risk mitigation.
Being a Human, at Work
Minudri explained that in this era when emerging technology may replace certain tasks or processes at work, and maybe even entire jobs, employees are trying to figure out, "What are the things that I uniquely bring to the table?"
In an increasingly automated world, people bring the ability to convey information to others, as well as influence and motivate peers, direct reports or even their own managers through upward feedback. In an increasingly remote and hybrid world, collaboration and new communication styles are increasingly important in order to work with co-workers and clients—those are things that generative AI and agentic tools are not able to master (yet).
"If you look at job listings, you'll find some of the most technical AI jobs are the ones that now have all of these human skills included in them," Minudri noted, adding that the experiences of going through challenging times also contribute to the importance of these skills.
"The pandemic was a challenging time, and then post-pandemic was a challenging time," she added. "Now, all these companies are really trying to ramp up their productivity, and they're trying to maintain engagement.…So, as a manager or a leader, leaning into those human skills has never been more important."
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Arora, a former executive at GoDaddy, WeWork, Intuit and ADP, expressed a similar emphasis for leaders on the ability to deal with challenging times. He added that the multigenerational workforce, expansion of remote and hybrid work, and ongoing evolution of machine learning and AI technologies are disrupting business at a rapid pace.
"Resilience, flexibility and agility are going to be three big attributes for any leader to succeed, because at the pace at which everything is changing, it'll create a lot more challenges and insecurities than you've ever seen, because you will know less than you thought you knew because of these changes," he explained.
The motive to pursue power skills applies equally to leaders and individual contributors alike, but managers in particular have been quite strained over these past few years, dealing with lockdown, remote work, the Great Resignation and an economic downturn, alongside myriad sociopolitical events roiling workplaces. Gallup research from 2023 notes that trust in corporate leadership is in decline and more recent studies point to declining employee engagement.
"People continue to be dissatisfied with their managers and with their leaders," Minudri said. "The demands on them are stronger than they've ever been, both in terms of the technology, the rate of change, the productivity that needs to happen, and then their connection to the human side of the business, the workforce and all of the gray areas."
While business leaders report a skills gap among the youngest members of the workforce, Gen Z, they have a responsibility going forward to address it, rather than placing blame on the youth.
"During the pandemic, there was less face-to-face interaction," Minudri said. "So that interpersonal communication was constrained by virtual technology, and then we also have a lot of distributed workforce that started because of the pandemic, and a lot of it has stayed.…That definitely has impacted the way that people newer in their careers communicate and understand the dynamics and the communication within a business setting."
Minudri, an L&D veteran from IBM who was leading the company's global digital learning programs before joining Coursera, suggests treating human skills with the same potential for ROI as technical skills, especially with younger employees who have received a lot of communication around the value of STEM majors and skill sets.
"People skills are an enabler, not only for your career but for your own productivity, so that they understand the value of it. I think there's a general misconception that it's natural, it comes easy," she said. "So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there to kind of bring them into the fold."
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