Are soft skills really more important than academics? How Hong Kong schools are moving beyond exam grades and STEM subjects to equip students for the workplace of tomorrow
- Hong Kong’s international schools have a reputation for providing students with excellent skills in scorable subjects, but what about soft skills which cannot be measured?perfect
- Today’s pupils are likely to have careers in a workplace dominated by automation and AI, and so must be ready for a fast-changing and increasingly digital world
In 2016, the World Economic Forum published a report, “The Future of Jobs”, which looked at employment, skills and workforce strategies for the future. Its authors asked chief human resources and strategy officers from global employers about current workforce trends and what they would mean for employment, skills and recruitment in the years to come.
One of the report’s headline findings was that experts believed that by 2021 “over one-third of skills (35 per cent) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed”. By 2025, “The Future of Jobs” predicted that critical thinking, complex problem-solving abilities, creativity, people management and emotional intelligence would be among the most important skills required in the workplace.