Rethinking Job Skills: Hard, Soft, and Complex

0:00Hey, it's Cory with the story with Sydney News today, your city, your news, every day. The old way we talk about job skills, splitting them into hard and soft categories just does not cut it anymore for tomorrow's workplaces. These terms go back to the 1960s when the US Army used them in training manuals. Hard skills meant technical stuff like operating machines or handling data analysis and coding. Soft skills covered things like communication, teamwork, and leadership. To teach mediation, say people underestimate these so-called soft skills. They point out that skills like active listening and resolving conflicts are tough to master, not easy or optional at all. Now, with artificial intelligence changing everything, we need a new category called complex skills. These blend human empathy and emotional intelligence with tech know-how, like managing teams of people and AI agents together. Interlanguage matters because calling skills soft makes them seem less important.

1:00To thrive ahead, we'll rely on hard, soft, and complex skills all working side by side. This story is made possible by our sponsor, See the episode description. A pillow that sounds as good as it feels, built for listening in bed, S-O-L-I-S-O-L-Pillow.com.