Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work

 Citizens will require new skills to work – but what skills? A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries suggests those governments may want to prioritize.

We know that digital and artificial intelligence technologies are changing the world of work and that today's workforce will need to learn new skills and constantly adapt as new occupations emerge. We also know that the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this transformation. Less clear, however, are the specific skills that tomorrow's workers will require.

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Research by the McKinsey Global Institute looked at what jobs will be lost, as well as those that will be created, as automation, artificial intelligence and robotics take hold. And she inferred the type of high-level skills that will become increasingly important as a result.1 The need for manual and physical skills, as well as basic cognitive skills, will decline, but the demand for technological, social, emotional, and higher cognitive skills will increase.

Governments are interested in helping their citizens develop in these areas, but it is difficult to design curricula and the best learning strategies without being more specific about the skills needed. It is difficult to teach what is not well defined.

That's why we've conducted research that we hope will help define definitions and could contribute to future citizen skills for the world of work.2 The research identified a set of 56 essential skills that will benefit all citizens and showed that higher proficiency in them is already associated with a higher probability of employment, higher incomes and job satisfaction.3

Defining basic skills for citizens

Some jobs will of course be specialized. But in a job market that is more automated, digital and dynamic, all citizens will benefit from having a set of essential skills that will help them meet the following three criteria, regardless of the sector they work in or the occupation:

• add value beyond what automated systems and intelligent machines can do
• work in a digital environment
• constantly adapting to new ways of working and new professions

We used academic research and McKinsey's experience in training adults to define what these core skills might be (Exhibit 1). We started from four broad skill categories – cognitive, digital, interpersonal and self-management – ​​and then identified 13 separate skill groups belonging to these categories.4 Communication and mental flexibility are two skill groups that belong to the cognitive category, e.g. teamwork effectiveness belongs to the interpersonal category.

DELTA expertise and results

From there, we conducted two more investigations. First, we sought to measure the level of expertise in 56 DELTA among today's workers compared to the level we believe will be required for citizens' future ability to work. Second, we sought to measure whether expertise in these DELTAs was already associated with certain work-related outcomes.

The results

We continued to test whether knowledge of DELTA already helps people in the world of work; results showed that survey respondents with higher DELTA proficiency were, on average, more likely to be employed, with higher incomes, and higher job satisfaction. However, different DELTAs were more strongly associated with these three work-related outcomes.

Holding constant all variables—including demographic variables and expertise in all other elements—we found that employment was most strongly associated with expertise in several DELTAs within the self-leadership category, namely "adaptability," "coping with uncertainty," "message synthesis." , and “success orientation” (Exhibit 4, Part 1).7

High income was most strongly associated with expertise in the four skill groups where the overall level of expertise was lowest among respondents—namely, understanding digital systems, using and developing software, planning, and ways of working and communicating (the first two fall under the digital category and the last two under cognitive category).8

Digital proficiency appears to be particularly associated with higher earnings: a respondent with higher digital proficiency across all digital DELTAs was 41 percent more likely to earn the highest income quintile than respondents with lower digital proficiency.9 The equivalent comparison was 30 percent for cognitive DELTA , 24 percent for self-management DELTA and 14 percent for interpersonal DELTA.

That is, the four DELTAs most strongly associated with high earnings were “developing a work plan” and “asking the right questions,” both in the cognitive category; "confidence", DELTA confidence; and “organizational awareness,” interpersonal DELTA (Exhibit 4, Part 2).10