Pearson’s Skills Outlook series provides vital insight into the immediate needs of the modern workforce, to help employers and employees stay current on upskilling trends and adapt to a tech-focused world.
While the first Skills Outlook report examined the most in-demand skills from an employer’s perspective, this second study, Employee View, looks at skilling through an employee’s lens. Developed in partnership with Google, we polled 4,000 people in four countries (US, UK, India and Brazil) to see what skills they were prioritizing for their career development.
The findings show that employees are preparing for a tech-focused world by building human skills, like problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork and leadership.
Among those looking to upskill, tech and business-related industries (such as software services, e-commerce, data science and financial services) are the top jobs of interest. Even as workers are more likely to be interested in tech careers, they will need to focus on human skills to move ahead. They believe these interpersonal skills – like problem solving, leadership, and teamwork – are the most attractive skills to employers today and will continue to be for the next 5-10 years.
This doesn’t mean technical skills are being side-lined, but employees are realizing human skills are essential to land jobs deemed essential by employers or advance in their current role.
Right now, the top skills employees are currently developing or looking to maintain to advance their career, by country, are:
Problem solving;
Decision making
Problem solving;
Teamwork
Teamwork;
Leadership
Teamwork;
Data Processing
Looking forward, the top two skills they would be interested in developing in the future are:
Leadership;
Entrepreneurial skills, Project
Management [Tie]
Leadership;
Problem solving
Language Skills;
Leadership
Problem solving;
Coding/Programming,
Data processing,
Artificial Intelligence
/Machine Learning
[Tie]
Other findings show that employees expect to keep learning throughout their career, want their employers to invest in this and are willing to put the work in to do so:
More than 3-in-4 employed workers expect to continue learning and training
opportunities throughout their entire career
Most workers (employed/unemployed/self-employed) (74%) prefer to learn via
their employer
Most employed workers (92%) expect that their workplace will increase or
maintain learning and development opportunities
Increasing compensation in either the same industry or another industry (54%)
and the desire for fulfilling work (46%) and are the top factors that would motivate
workers to pursue upskilling or reskilling.
Pearson partnered with Google to examine how and why people in the US, UK, India, and Brazil are looking to upskill as they face a rapidly changing economy.
The fieldwork was conducted by Ipsos in these four countries between 30 August and 23 September 2022. The survey included 4,000 workers (employed or unemployed and entering the workforce in the next 18 months), balanced to be representative of the population, who are interested in or actively upskilling/reskilling/in an education program, and who will be in the workforce in the next 5-10 years.