'Unexpected' skills that have risen in demand since COVID

New research from national science agency CSIRO has found that, since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a higher demand among Australian employers for employees with strong interpersonal skills.

The research involved an analysis of more than 12 million online job ads from job search engine Adzuna Australia between 2015 and 2022. It found an ‘accelerated demand’ for employees with interpersonal skills such as communication and networking – with the highest demand across remote jobs.

This demand for interpersonal skills was mainly driven by a spike in job postings looking for candidates with capabilities in communication and collaboration.

Interpersonal skills in demand

David Evans, lead author and senior experimental scientist at the CSIRO, described which types of interpersonal skills were in demand based on the study.

“[For example] presenting information, consulting, networking and also obtaining information verbally,” he told HRD Australia. “These were all skills that had spikes in demand since the pandemic.”

The skills were particularly sought after for workers in occupations that do remote work or have high rates of remote working, such as people in managerial and clerical positions, Evans said.

“This result was somewhat unexpected, as before, this evidence was a bit mixed on the impact that remote work would have on skills requirements.”  

The findings also came despite Australia experiencing a historically low unemployment rate.

“The other surprising thing about it is that this acceleration has occurred despite a fairly long period of labour market tightening in Australia,” he said. “And typically, during these periods, we observed dampened growth in demand for skills or reduced growth in demand for skills, but here, we’re just observing an acceleration despite that.”

Why the demand for interpersonal skills?

While the study didn’t necessarily focus on why employers had a stronger focus on these interpersonal skills, it could be due to the needs required while remote working, Evans said.

“Our working hypothesis is probably that they were required to overcome some of the challenges that remote work probably presents,” he said. “The usual teamwork and collaboration processes in a lot of occupations that are fundamental to doing those jobs.”

In addition, one other key finding from the study was a spike in demand for digital skills.

“The main kind of acceleration that we saw since the pandemic was in skills, in accessing and analysing digital data,” Evans explained. “Not necessarily focused on skills in communicating and collaborating using these tools but probably using those systems to access and analyse data.”

How HR should deal with skills gap

There are benefits in organisations developing these interpersonal skills in light of the research findings, he said, and it would be interesting to learn whether the demand for interpersonal skills is leading to the emergence of skills gaps that HR professionals are observing.

“Is it difficult to hire workers with these skills? Are there particular things in recruitment they're struggling to find?” Evans said. “And that can probably inform what's going to be useful for HR managers to do.

“So assuming that this rise in demand has led to some difficulties in recruiting workers with these interpersonal skills, then I think that there probably are benefits to making some investments in trying to help workers developing these skills at work.”

Having employees with strong interpersonal skills can also be beneficial as they can fill a greater number of roles in an organisation, he said.

“That's going to be useful at the organisational level as production activities change over time, and you're looking to shift people into different jobs to undertake that production.”  

Interpersonal skills in education

More broadly, the research also suggested the possibility of creating opportunities to teach interpersonal skills to students.

“A lot of formal education traditionally is focused on those hard skills that are required for different occupations and that's always going to be crucial,” Evans said. “But I think that a natural implication of our results is that those sorts of education systems having probably a greater emphasis on these interpersonal skills is going to be important.

“It's something that can help support a better match between the skills that students have and the skills that employers need.”