Jessica Ollenburg, CMC CPCM, Partner

As we address the skills gap and the need to change how we educate, the skills most lacking are those related to problem solving, work ethic, leadership, time management and organizational communications. Unless and until we can rely upon pre-employment training to develop these toolsets in our team members, employers need to absorb the burden of this development, thereby enjoying the incredible ROI on the initiative. Many are still failing to capture this incredible upside opportunity. 

These 5 key skills represent the most critically lacking employment skills, as well as, the most efficient means of employer resolution. These also represent the most popular and successful workshops across widespread talent functions, hierarchy and lifecycle stages. 

1. Problem Solving:

There is nothing less common than sense, and few academic institutions are properly developing critical thinking. With the crazed-wave deployment of unlawful personality profiles and meaningless instruments, we’re strongly recommending talent assessment such as the SR2, pinpointing problem solving, trainability and critical thinking beyond job knowledge. Critical thinking can be taught, and many unique problem-solving styles can succeed in the workplace. Critical thinking is not necessarily a pass-fail proposition. Via proper assessment and delivery, educational bullets such as problem solving, data interpretation, metrics, cost-benefit analysis, and the Six Hats of Thinking are highly effective at identifying individual trouble spots and capturing opportunity for development.

2. Work Ethic:

While the U.S. continues to lag global competitors in average work week and appropriate recharge use of break time, productivity will equally lag. Employers have a responsibility and an opportunity in setting forth culture and expectations of the work hours, commitment and focus needed for individual and corporate success. The less committed employees are demotivating the more committed. Window-dressing engagement is not enough. As third party expert educators, we’ve realized the upside, and we need to get this message out! If work ethic factors are extrinsic, corporate education can mitigate, if not eliminate, the problem.

3. Leadership:

“Cash is King” only to the point that life’s needs can be afforded. Thereafter, employee retention, employer brand, risk management and workforce productivity all rely more heavily on proper leadership. Old-school methods of promoting the best “doers” are rightfully replaced with promoting more interested and trainable leaders, and then developing them with lifelong leader learning. Poorly trained leaders decimate success in a labor-intensive organization. Furthermore, as long as employees are willing to forego 15% compensation for a better boss, employers find a less costly and more productive win in properly selecting and developing leaders. For proper role modeling and culture, leaders must be seen embracing learning, while balancing their immediate credibility. Leader learning is best deployed as a partnership between internal and external expert trainers.

4. Time Management:

While the first component of time management might be gaining worker commitment to expand the workday, actual time management and efficiency-based routines are currently under-taught.  While lean thinking and efficient use of technology are often properly attended, time management in work flow planning, appropriate multi-tasking, prioritization, communication tactics, team meeting protocol and compartmentalization are critical to education initiatives. By teaching holistic time management, we additionally reduce energy shift and optimize quality. 

5. Organizational Communications:

Beyond the time management principles involved in crafting communications, fabulous upside is gained through proper teaching of communication mode selection, non-verbal cues, body language, time, place, audience and tone. While anti-harassment is lawfully essential to employer reasonable care, teaching acceptance of dissimilarity also delivers competitive edge, better invention and enhanced problem solving. Exceptional curriculum includes the benefits of diverse thinking, as well as, the protocol most effective with each of the 16 personality types. Today’s most popular topics also include Internal customer service and building organizational bridges. 

When teaching these 5 skills, 3 key rules are critical to learning, yet still under-attended by those employers missing the mark. These 3 simple rules include: 

1. Address unique audience learning style and aptitude, 

2. Deploy simultaneous assessment toward curriculum development and success benchmarking, and 

3. Remove fear of reprisal. 

More specifically, participative learning remains preferred by most, while auditory learning remains least effective. Pacing too fast, too slow and/or audience adaptation failures remain common pitfalls. Training from, or in the presence of, supervisors creates fear of reprisal and fear of presenting the “stupid question.” (I always remind here the only stupid question is the one not asked.) 

While employers cannot rely solely upon external expert educators, both internal and external trainers must partner for optimum learning. Roundtable workshops, facilitated by topic experts deploying Gestalt Protocol, are the fastest and most meaningful method of speed-track knowledge transfer and useful application. Live case studies are highly engaging for even those not prone to academia, and these similarly avoid distracting perception of internal bias. In our corporate education series, our own case studies are revealed in full protection of employer confidentiality and intellectual property, of course.  

We invite you to stay tuned for continuing information on this topic including steadfast findings and ever-emerging trends. Keep training!