Most working professionals have by now understood that their work will either get replaced by machines or augmented using some sort of human-machine interface. The replacement will be by robots in case of manual work, or by AI in case of cognitive nature of work. The World Economic Forum (WEF) helped in clarifying that soft skills such as creative thinking, collaboration, empathy and context sensing will be high in demand. This will be a difficult transition, as honing soft skills is not well understood, unlike the hard skills for which so much analysis is available. One of the major barriers to this transition is the fact that schools run a lot like factories, as the foundations have stayed solid since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. There are a lot of electronic gadgets for children growing up, as a result of which, the human interaction reduces. Work today is also highly stressful, which naturally leads to a reduction in empathy. Going ahead, schools need to eliminate the glorification of rote learning. Specific corporate training programmes need to be initiated which will help employees use technological innovations to hone soft skills, as done successfully by KFC. Certain wearable devices must be used which can reduce stress.

Source:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-challenge-of-scaling-soft-skills/

Uploaded Date:21 November 2018