Why we’ll need to relearn essential human skills

Whether it's to do with technology, work methods, or collaboration, the ever-increasing complexity of our world makes the need for flexibility and openness more crucial than ever. We’ll probably even need to relearn some basic skills that we once took for granted. I’m not just talking about technological knowledge but about deeply human habits, even the essence of interaction.

Chess Clocks

When my nexxworks colleagues recently visited Samsung in South Korea, they were struck by the chess clocks on every table in the cafeteria. Once a group sat down, the clocks counted down from 15 minutes. You may think that this was an efficiency measure, to speed up the turnover and serve as many people as possible. But that was not it. The purpose was to encourage people to sit down for at least a quarter of an hour, to talk to each other, and relax, instead of hastily eating their lunch and rushing back to work. 

Strangely enough, this was about rediscovering human interaction, even during a lunch break.

The pandemic has profoundly influenced the social dynamics in our workplaces. At HR conferences worldwide, I often hear the same story: companies struggle to reshape interaction patterns and communication styles after extended periods of remote work. The numbers are troubling. According to the American consulting firm Gartner, 30 percent of employees in the U.S. go out of their way to avoid colleagues in the office. Many workers have grown accustomed to working alone, interrupted only by a Zoom or Teams meeting, which, once concluded, ends all further interaction. 

True, we have all been there in the past, when we saw a colleague approaching and thought “I’m really not in the mood for that person right now.” It happens. But if one in three employees actively avoids their colleagues, something deeper is at play. So we see companies increasingly investing in “guided collaboration”: initiatives without technology, aimed at teaching employees to collaborate in a “normal” way again. COVID-19 and the abundance of remote work have made us less social and in need of relearning some essential social skills.

AI Natives

There’s also another dynamic at work here. The percentage of employees noticing a shift in the skills needed for their jobs, used to average around 9 percent annually. During COVID, when many people had to quickly learn to use digital tools, that number jumped to nearly 20 percent. After the pandemic, the percentage dipped slightly, but in the past two years, it has surged dramatically to 25 percent and is even expected to reach 30 percent. A significant driver is of course the rise of AI, which not only creates uncertainty but demands extensive new knowledge and skills.

At the same time, CEOs have sky-high expectations of AI, anticipating productivity growth of as much as 17 percent. This places additional pressure on employees, who often feel completely unprepared for these changes.

The rise of a fully AI-native generation adds to the discomfort felt by today’s workforce. The new generation of employees, currently still in school, is extensively using AI. They use tools like “interview co-pilot”, which listens to job interviews and suggest real time AI-generated responses.

“Unlearn” and “relearn” are becoming the cornerstones of the future work culture. There is a crucial role to play for HR here. Sadly enough, that department often remains too transactional, focused on functional tasks like administration and payroll in many companies. But in our Never Normal era, HR has a golden opportunity to guide companies into the future. As the relationship between humans and machines is being deeply redefined, new skills and competencies must take center stage.

So let’s not lose sight of essential human skills in that process: empathy, communication, and connection. This way, we will hopefully become less inclined to avoid interaction and won’t have to rely on a clock to remind us that we can talk to one another.

This is a translated version of a piece in De Tijd.