Skills

The Great Disruption is changing the skills you need on the job

Report: BurningGlass Institute, Emsi BurningGlass, and Boston Consulting Group find that 37% of the top skills needed for the average U.S. job have been replaced over the past 5 years
-

The types of skills you need in the workforce have shifted throughout history. Over the past century-plus, we’ve gone from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy to a tech-centric economy focused on information and services.

So, it really isn’t a surprise that the work skills we need today are so much different than the ones we needed a few decades ago.

What may be surprising is just how fast those skills have changed in the past few years.

According to a new report from the Burning Glass Institute, Emsi Burning Glass, and the Boston Consulting Group – Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce – 37% of the top 20 skills needed for the average U.S. job have been replaced over the past five years. Additionally, one-in-five of the average job’s top skills were entirely new to the job during that same period, particularly in the two years since the pandemic.

Trends that seemed to be driving these changes:  the rising demand for digital skills in non-digital occupations, for soft skills in digital occupations, for visual communications skills across occupations, and for social media skills.

I talked to Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, about the report findings.

The report calls it “The Great Disruption.”

“We found that the pace of change accelerated markedly during the pandemic. Whether you’re talking about digital skills, soft skills or foundational skills, or social media skills, these are skills that almost everyone’s being asked to have,” Sigelman explains.

“The pace of change has significant implications for higher education and its ability to ensure that graduates have the skills they need to launch successfully. It also has significant implication for whether workers will be able to keep up, or they will find themselves obsolete. So, you, the worker, need to, to be aware of what skills will drive your career going forward,” he adds. 

There are also significant implications for companies and whether they can have the the workforce they need going forward, according to Sigelman.

You can read more details of the report here.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.