What are the top three skills that are desired post-Covid?
The post-covid world will be one where many skills will be prioritised that were simply just ‘nice’ to have before. More than ever clients are looking for individuals that have proven agility of mind and skill who will be able to tweak and alter the direction of a business – depending on the direction of travel and external factors of which they have no control. This can make the difference between survival and failure in an economic setting where no one can be sure of what is around the corner.
People that have the ability to see and play out different potential scenarios and plan for these effects will be an absolute asset to any business which hopes to continue growing – or indeed to capitalise on the market as it stands currently.
There will be a new age for Executive and Board level positions whereby the way that companies were run will just not survive in the post-covid dawn. For instance, presenteeism will need to be a thing of the past as hybrid or complete home-working move to the forefront. Archaic views on what constitutes a “good employee” will gladly find themselves amiss with the new World. This is where the skill to be able to understand the motivations, desires and hopes for each individual employee will come to the fore. It will be imperative to have senior executives in your business who embody these skills and are able to see where there are potential struggles or pitfalls for people within the new working environment.
Why will future planning be an important skill?
Future-proofing your business has been proven to be impossible throughout the previous 18 months. While we can prepare our business to the best of our abilities for all eventualities it is no longer possible to guess what the future landscapes will look like with certainty. Cyclic recessions and economic downturns may no longer be dictated by the financial markets and may be more at the behest of pandemics, Brexit or other factors.
To allow for your business to succeed outside this it is essential that you have a strong presence of skills that will allow you to plan for future fluctuations in market conditions both globally and locally. The ability to be able to keep your business agile and not allow any Trojan horse to exist may be the best way to protect your business. Whilst it may be painful to push your business to this point, in the long run it will be to your benefit.
What are people saying at top level?
Executive and Non-Executive Board members are aligned with the current sentiment that the way business is done will have changed fundamentally and that the Covid pandemic has moved virtual and home-working forward years, if not decades in 18 short months. The opinion however is that memories are short and that it could very easily slip back to the transactional nature of business that was prevalent prior to Covid-19 taking hold.
Why will Mental Health be more important than ever and why wasn’t it before?
Mental Health has also, thankfully, been thrust into the spotlight over the course of the past 18 months for so many reasons. It may be that you have been separated from your family for the last 18 months, or you have lost loved ones, or you have lived and worked alone in a studio flat with no outside space through the three lockdowns that we have experienced; all of these will have negatively impacted our mental health. It is not possible to have lived through the pandemic and not have had moments where you have stopped and let the enormity of it all sweep over you. There is a difference between positivity and optimism and whilst positivity can become toxic through expectations, optimism can help to keep a positive mental state.
Now more than ever businesses need to invest in ensuring the overall health and wellbeing of their workforce and this extends to physical and mental wellbeing and welfare. Businesses have an obligation to listen to their staff and teams and allow them to determine what is best to allow them to achieve maximum productivity in the post-pandemic era. This may be a young person being in the office full time so that they can absorb their co-worker’s knowledge, or it may be someone with a long commute who can now work almost exclusively from home, or it may well be someone who wants to flex their hours around their family life. There is surely no wrong answer and the working environment has to be adapted to allow for this.
Yes, there will always be people who will take advantage and their performance will dip, however, the vast majority of people take pride in what they do and a dip in performance doesn’t necessarily a skiver make!
– Claire Gillespie, Managing Director