BerLearn: Key Insights From The Event PowerSkills: Being Future Proof For 2025 Starts Here

April 8th 2021, Lepaya and BerLearn teamed up to host the webinar Power Skills: Being Future Proof for 2025.

Speakers René Janssen, founder of Lepaya, Dagmar Lens, Education & Research Lead at Microsoft, Maximilian Elling, Head Of Talent Management DACH Region at Schneider Electric, Daniel Breitwieser, Enterprise Transformation Consultant  at CoachHub alongside moderator Juliëtte Plantenga, Learning Concept Designer & Team lead at Lepaya brought some fascinating insights to the table and opened up a discussion surrounding the ever growing importance of equipping your employees with Power Skills in order to stay future proof.

The meaning of Power Skills

After opening up the Webinar and gauging the audience’s familiarity with Power Skills (most of whom were not familiar with Power Skills), Juliëtte introduced Lepaya co-founder and managing director René Janssen. René came to found Lepaya after looking for the ideal learning solution for his people while working as HR Director at Lazada. He soon realized that what he was looking for was impactful Power Skills trainings that simply did not exist. René believes that Power Skills are what will determine your employees next promotion. Referring to the World Economic Forum’s top 10 future proof skills for 2025, he explained that many of these skills come as a combination of practical hard skills, soft “people” skills and the application of these- this is what Power Skills are made of.

For the audience:

”In my organization I see the need to focus on Power Skills”

The importance of Power Skills

At an organizational level, René recalled, referring to Lepaya’s own research, that 60% of CEO’s see their employees skill set as the biggest challenge to remain competitive. On an employee level, further referring to Lepaya’s research, René stated that over 40% of employees believe their current skill set will not remain relevant in future labor markets, while less 50% feel upskilling is a priority to their employers. This indicates that a better learning and development facilitation can help organizations to stay competitive while also hiring and retaining talented employees. René finished his presentation by reminding the audience that lifelong learning implemented in the workplace can change hiring forever.

Microsoft story: A simple skills formula

The next speaker to share their piece was Dagmar Lens of Microsoft. Dagmar explained to the audience her position on Power Skills. Passionate about learning, Dagmar focuses on the future of learning, explaining that it is changing not only in the professional world, but in schools and universities. The goal now is to strive for lifelong learning. Referring to research conducted by Microsoft of 2,000 teachers and 2,000 students, Dagmar provided valuable insights into their thoughts on the future of the labor market. This research resulted in a simple skills formula:

Skills Required: High-level cognitive skills + Social and emotional skills =“Life-ready” learning.

“Life-ready” is becoming future proof

The average university graduate today will have roughly 6 career paths after graduating, with so much change and adaptations necessary, the idea is no longer to be “work-ready”, but to develop skills that prepare people for life, not just a job. Social skills are twice as predictive of academic performance than other factors such as home environment or demographics. High levels of social skills development also correlated with a number of positive health and wellbeing effects. These skills are extended, amplified and reimagined by the influence of technology. The overarching message of this research indicated that practical “technical” skills alone are not enough to ensure future-proofness. Power Skills are what the future needs, with an expected increase of 6.2 million IT related jobs by 2022.

For the audience:

Is investing in Power Skills high, medium or low on the employer’s agenda?

Personalization over automation

This research also revealed that students want personalization, not automation. Students believe they learn more when they have a greater voice and choice and receive personalized feedback. This is echoed in the results of students who receive personalized instruction performing better than 98% of traditionally educated students.

Closing her presentation, Dagmar asked the audience to think about the skills that help them grow and learn as an adult everyday, while posing the following questions:

• How do you attract and keep talent in your organization?
• What are the top 3 things that the “learn-it-all” people would like in your organization?
• What will you do to facilitate them?

Schneider Electric chooses Power Skills

Finally, Juliëtte introduced final speakers Daniel Breitwieser of CoachHub and Maximilian Elling of Schneider Electric who briefly introduced their companies before discussing the specific needs of Schneider Electric that enabled them to discover Power Skills. For Schneider Electric, a digital transformation was necessary. Their customers wanted it, their market was developing and Power Skills helped them during their future proof digital transformation. At first, Schneider focused on a Power Skill similar to Lepaya’s Self-Awareness & Growth Mindset, but leaning more towards change and agility mindset. Maximilian reminded the audience that this Power Skill promotes a readiness to learn, necessary as Schneider hopes to upskill 1000s of employees across the organization.

For the audience:

Should we invest in Power Skills?

For the audience:

Which future proof Power Skill do you think your organization could benefit most from?

People at Schneider had the hard skills but still struggled with their performance. By researching their own employees, together with CoachHub, Schneider were able to pinpoint what they needed to transform and did so successfully to provide lifelong learning to their employees.

For the audience:

How many employees fear they will no longer be relevant to future labor markets?

6 Key takeaways from the Panel Discussion

After hearing from all speakers, a Panel Discussion with questions from the audience provided some key takeaways:

• Having multiple types of Power Skills on your team makes it strong and diverse, Power Skills are an individualised learning experience, the more skills you train your employees with the better equipped they will be.
• Power Skills are tools that can never be replaced by automation or robots. They combine logic with human touch to reach a resolution. Human’s with Power Skills will never be replaceable.
• Using data is crucial to measure impact. Working digitally as most companies are today, gives employers the opportunity to look at data and see where interventions are needed to support their teams. This data can be used to measure the effectiveness of Power Skills and show how they benefit your organization.
• All of the panelists believe that “Skill Passports” will eventually overtake the traditional resumé. The emphasis should no longer be on previous workplace experience but on the necessary skills to complete the job. This creates fairness in the labor market and ensures that applicants have the necessary job mobility that prepares them for their career, making the path from higher education to the workplace smoother.
• The effectiveness of training is dependent on the individual. By creating personalized training programs for your employees, you can guarantee impact for all by giving them the program that best suits their needs.
• The best way to start Power Skills training in your organization? Be bold, and just start! Determine what you want to change in your organization and start today!

Of course, this is just a taster of some of the truly valuable points our speakers made. If you wish to learn more, keep an eye on our LinkedIn and join our next webinar!

Speakers

René Janssen

Co-Founder & Managing Director of Lepaya

Dagmar Lens

Education & Research Lead at Microsoft

Daniel Breitwieser

Enterprise Transformation Consultant bij CoachHub

Maximilian Elling

Head Of Talent Management DACH Region bij Schneider Electric

Juliette Plantenga

Learning Concept Designer & Team Lead at Lepaya