What Will the Most Desirable Skills be in 2025?

October 27, 2020

What will the most desirable skills be in the year 2025? That’s a question that the World Economic Forum – WEF – tackled at its most recent summit, which drew headlines after claims that more than half of jobs being done by a human-driven workforce are set to be replaced by robots in the coming decade.

The summit made headlines after detailing, what experts believe, will be the most valuable skills, training and credentials an employee can possess in 2025, during one of the most revolutionary workforce shifts we’re set to see. A report published by the World Economic Forum forecasts that robots will replace as many as 85 million jobs in certain industries, while the rise of automation will simultaneously create an additional 97 million jobs.

The jobs most at risk by 2025, according to the WEF, are: accounting, bookkeeping and payroll clerks, assembly and factory workers, business administration managers, mechanics, client information and customer service workers, data entry clerks, general managers as well as stock-keepers, accountants and auditors.

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What will the Most Desirable Skills be in 2025?

In order to prepare the workforce for a dramatic shift in the nature of roles and their subsequent skill sets, the WEF says it’s essential to close the skills gap and train employees for new avenues of employment. According to the key findings of the report, authors write that “top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence are in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis, as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.”

The WEF’s authors continue to explain that “on average, companies estimate that around 40% of workers will require reskilling of six months or less and 94% of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job, a sharp uptake from 65% in 2018.” The most recent report states that that the most desirable skills in 2025 will be in the following areas:

Critical thinking and analysis

Innovation

Complex Problem-solving

Creativity, originality and initiative

Leadership and Social Influence

Self Management

Working with People

Technology use, monitoring and control

Management and Communication of Activities

Technology Use and Development

Resilience, Stress Tolerance and Flexibility

Emotional Intelligence

Service Orientation

Persuasion and Negotiation

Core Literacies

Physical Abilities

Technology Design and Programming

Authors of the WEF’s report note that in order to meet the necessary level of upskilling and training for the workforce, organisations and governments need to be forward thinking and proactive in their education and training policy decisions. “When it comes to employers providing workers with training opportunities for reskilling and upskilling,” the authors explain, “in contrast to previous years, employers are expecting to lean more fully on informal as opposed to formal learning… an organisation’s learning curricula is expected to blend different approaches – drawing on internal and external expertise, on new education technology tools and using both formal and informal methods of skills and acquisition.”