Do you have the skills for 2020?

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

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So what are the skills you require for 2020? 

According to the World Economic Forum’s recent report “The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and  Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution” published in January 2016 the top 10 skills required for 2020 are:

  1. Complex Problem Solving

  2. Critical Thinking

  3. Creativity

  4. People Management

  5. Coordinating with Others

  6. Emotional Intelligence

  7. Judgment and Decision Making

  8. Service Orientation

  9. Negotiation

  10. Cognitive Flexibility

Why are these skills so important?

According to the report, we are at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a collective term that embraces automation, big data smart technologies, cyber-physical systems and the internet of things and services.
Such disruptive changes to enterprise, society and our individual experiences will have profound consequences for employment in the coming years.  As the report states: “In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate. By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.”

Here in South West England we are already at the forefront of this revolution: with ground-breaking research and training at our Universities creating the skilled graduates of 2020 now, and a raft of world-leading businesses based here in the region creating the jobs for them.