The modern workplace requires a little more than dedication and loyalty. It needs an actual set of skills to assess performance and evaluate productivity. In this article, we will look at 5 crucial skills to have in every workplace – so yes, it is useful for everyone irrespective of the work background.
Skill: A skill is a practiced and polished ability that has the intention of solving the relevant problem.
People may be born with abilities but they can get better only after those abilities are transformed into skills. A skill set is a collection of such related or unrelated skills.
Since the pandemic of 2020, many workplaces transformed the way they worked and the employees had to catch up. Working from home requires being tech-aware, using various digital skills along with your technical skills was a bit of a challenge for all knowledge workers. This is where the need to define skills became evident.
Following are 5 crucial skills to have in every workplace:
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Communication skills
Communication is perhaps the most crucial skill in all workplaces. From talking to the boss to negotiating with the customer to writing an email to upper management, communication is a part of everything. Communication skills are necessary irrespective of the nature of the job. A wage worker might need to communicate as frequently as a knowledge worker – although the modes may be different in both of those cases.
Primarily, there are two types of communication:
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Verbal communication and
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Non-verbal communication
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Verbal communication: It is defined as any form of communication which can be read or heard. An email, letter, speech, chat, are all forms of verbal communication.
There is a speaker and a recipient in every communication and the message which is transferred from speaker to the recipient has an objective. The message can be communicated in any form – written or spoken.
Non-verbal communication: Any form of communication that is not classified under verbal type, is non-verbal communication. Body language, expressions, posture, signs, sounds are all non-verbal communication.
Clear communication skills are necessary to avoid conflicting messages which may not serve the objective. Communication is crucial to solving problems as well as to conveying problems. As far as importance goes, without communication, the human species would probably have never evolved.
2. Technological skills
Tech skills have become very important and must-have skills in recent years – especially since the Covid pandemic started. Using or managing an application, basic internet streaming, video conferencing, use of email, and basic documentation on the computer – all are classified as technological skills.
Use of social media, higher excel formulas, graphic designing, are moderate to high technical skills that many people have developed in the last two years.
Technology has made life easier and quicker and to catch up to the speed, it is crucial to have at least basic technology skills. Apart from the ones mentioned above, other tools to improve digital skills would be basic use of MS-office, basic internet privacy, and security, basic photo editing, use of various messengers or social media.
Technology has made drastic leaps in the last decade. The time required for the evolution of technology is reducing fast. Earlier, iPhone 4 to iPhone 5 took 3 years but now we get a new iPhone every year. The use of the cloud for storage has drastically increased over portable drive storage which necessitates further knowledge of tech skills.
Enhancing a career largely depends on technical knowledge combined with stream-specific technical skills.
3. Empathy
Empathy is to imagine or consider how a person would feel in a certain situation. Empathy is especially useful when working in a team at the workplace. It can be used to assess how a certain person would feel in a very specific situation and empathize with him or her.
It is used to relate to someone regarding their feelings or emotions and empathizing with them is the best way to connect. Empathy is especially useful in a sales job where it can be used to empathize with a customer or prospect. Collaboration gets work done and completes projects within deadlines. It also helps to get the best of everything.
Collaboration can be successfully achieved by empathy. Empathy helps to understand the situation a person is going through and helps you to respond accordingly.
4. Creativity
Solving problems creatively is an important skill that is valued in every workplace. Creativity does not necessarily have to be developing something new or out of the box all the time but it can also be as simple as using a common tool to solve an important problem.
No doubt creative skills mean creating something new out of nothing or something existing and those are valued as well. Tools like Photoshop, creative writing, painting, and advertising require creativity. Marketing especially requires creativity all the time – right from developing a catchy tagline to having an engaging social media post, marketing thrives on creativity.
Creativity is also needed in a grocery store to smartly arrange goods to attract customers. Developing new ways for an existing problem or to perform a function requires creativity.
5. Adaptability
Change is inevitable everywhere – be it at the workplace or elsewhere. Survival of the fittest AND most adaptable is inevitable. Adaptability involves adjusting to the given situation without changes in performance.
The pandemic improved digital adoption faster than anticipated and almost everyone became more tech-savvy than they were before the pandemic. People adopted digitalization and adapted to the new normal. Similarly, workplace adaptability would be adjusting to a new co-worker or new boss, new management, or new position or assignment. A workplace is constantly being influenced by the presence of employees and keeps getting impacted by them. This is bound to impact employees in one way or another and this is where adaptability as a skill can be crucial.
Apart from people, there could be changes to the system, procedures, software, and hardware, and adaptability is a good skill to have which will help you navigate through the sea of changes.
While these five skills are crucial, there could be other job-specific skills that are necessary but these five skills are necessary at any and every workplace.