In response to the tight labor market, especially in the tech sector, cutting-edge companies are investing more in training their current workforce to meet employment needs of the future. Four HR executives at forward-thinking organizations discussed what they anticipate to be the job market needs around the corner with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, who moderated a From Day One webinar titled, “Anticipating the Job Skills of the Future.”

The speakers focused on the fast pace of change, especially in digital fields. “Customer service has completely changed during the past few years,” said Judith Almendra-Rodriguez, VP of global human capital and talent acquisition at TTEC, a customer-experience tech and services company. While communication and service orientation are still key, now this role also requires complex problem solving, analytical skills, and a lot more cognitive flexibility. “The basic [customer service] things have been completely automated,” she said, “So now, you are dealing with a much more complex interactions, and multiple software. And as the market got tighter, there became a lot more jobs available than people looking for those opportunities. It’s an area that we need to continue to upskill.”

This is the kind of transition HR managers and other business executives are trying to anticipate. The mass exodus from the office to work-from-home brought about other changes too. “The last two years taught us the importance of the ability to inspire and lead teams, and manage through significant change,” said Giselle Battley, senior director and global head of early-career talent at JLL, a commercial real-estate services company. She anticipates those trends to persist in the future.

Rachel Lipson, co-founder and director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, flagged resilience as another skill that became a “must-have” during the pandemic. Tamara Jolivette-Smith, director of HR at Houston Methodist, one of the largest medical centers in the world, added that having an open mind about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is crucially important. “Embracing how that applies in your organization is also a necessary skill,”she said.

McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza asked what kinds of jobs and job functions are most in need of upskilling.

Lipson pointed to the tech sector in general as the toughest talent to hire, but added that companies need to also think about future needs. “The jobs that are growing the fastest now and will continue to do so are those jobs that have a mix of technical and soft skills,” she said. “So not just pure programmers or pure data scientists, but dual players who are needed to deal with humans and work in teams–and lead and manage–but also have strong technical competencies. Building skills like communication, management and teamwork, and leadership are going to transfer easily from role to role and also persist over the course of someone's career.”

How can organizations identify specific skills that need updating within an organization?Almendra-Rodriguez pointed out the importance of a robust assessment tool. TTEC launched a platform tool that combines performance management, talent assessments, mentorship programs, rotation, and e-learning into one single platform. This tool allows for self-assessment or peer-assessment. Jolivette-Smith said that Houston Medical relies on a partnership between HR leaders and executive leaders, as well as employee focus groups, to get an understanding of where the skill gaps are and develop a plan for filling those gaps.

As far as how the actual training gets done, Battley explained that JLL has several initiatives. “We have a very robust learning and leadership development team that is constantly working hand-in-hand with the business to identify what the key skills needed are, and what the learning journey should be within each of our business lines,” she said. JLL recently created a talent-partner role, which focuses on understanding where the skill gaps are, where the future of the business is headed with our current talent landscape, and helping to bridge all of those things together.

McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza brought up that a strong culture of DEI in an organization be a huge talent attractor, and asked how that can be used for recruiting. Lipson, who has studied this, explained that creating opportunities for work-based learning, especially for those who might not have had the economic opportunity to achieve an advanced education, needs to be more of priority for companies in attracting and keeping a diverse, skilled workforce. “We can learn from other countries that have invested much more heavily in apprenticeships,” she said. Battley added that it’s important for companies to walk the talk of DEI by offering in-house training and also  promoting from within. More than 80% of JLL’s leadership team has grown within the company, based on a continuous commitment to employee development, she said.

“It’s key that we actually execute the StrengthsFinder assessment for early-career professionals early on in the recruitment process,” added Almendra-Rodriguez. “We need to show our commitment to understanding where their strengths and not necessarily just their gaps are, and show our commitment to continuing to work on their strengths along the way.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Lever, which provides employers with recruiting software.

Jennifer Haupt is a Seattle-based author and journalist.