Should We Develop Skills in Our Employees?.

Some Things Are Obvious…

Even a superficial glance at various portals will make it clear that job hopping has become widespread. Any manager in any company has encountered minor or major employee turnover. Anyone who has made even a small effort to understand how their employees function is aware that they are prone to external validation. We've written about this before, so we'll just briefly reiterate. Yes, it's very important for us to compare ourselves with someone, it's very important for someone to tell us that we're on the right track or to try to confirm that "right track" with something – even if it means changing jobs. Besides the need for external validation, something else encourages us: monitoring. Or, in English, perhaps clumsily translated: supervision. What is supervision? The desire to assess our own or others' effectiveness in order to make improvements, introduce changes, or take corrective actions.

Supervision is a skill. One of many skills.

What Are Skills?

To describe or explain skills, Wikipedia is sufficient, stating that: "A skill generally refers to a learned or acquired pattern of behavior. The concept of skill thus differs from the concept of ability, which is considered a prerequisite for achieving skills. A skill is an individual's capacity to quickly and accurately perform a series of systematically organized operations or sets of operations for easier and more successful task completion."

If we want to delve a bit deeper into skills, then we'd say that, whether we like it or not, people are in constant interaction with other people. To better navigate (or adapt to) life, we must possess certain skills and ultimately know how to use them. Precisely because of this constant interpersonal interaction, skills are extremely important.

There are various types of human skills that can be developed. For example, there are social skills, which include things like the ability to communicate effectively and relate to others. There are also practical skills, which enable us to take care of ourselves and ultimately create or produce something. We also have cognitive skills, or perhaps better put, abilities like memory, deductive and inductive reasoning, visualization, mental flexibility… Some might call this intelligence, although that's a broader topic we'll save for another time.

Cognitive skills, or abilities, as previously stated, are a prerequisite for skill attainment.

However, cognitive abilities and skills are also crucial for recruiting.

Occupational Information Network

What is O*NET? Loosely translated, it's a database with all information about specific occupations. So, it's a free online database containing countless job definitions to help, among others, us at DeeP Project, students, job seekers, companies, and HR consultants responsible for employee learning and development, to better understand the labor market. Primarily in the USA, and ultimately, why not here too.

It was primarily developed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Labor during the 1990s.

It primarily helps us to find out what skills and abilities are required for a particular occupation, for example, for today's very popular software developers, to be good programmers. However, it also aids in employee development. How? By helping us focus on the skills necessary for a specific occupation.

Of course, nowadays it's increasingly difficult to find a "ready-made" developer. You have to poach someone else's, hope no one poaches yours again, or… develop your own developer and retain them for a longer period. And poach a few.

What do the necessary skills and abilities for a developer look like?

Let's Return to the Obvious (and Motivation)

When I was getting hired, I had no idea what a profit and loss statement was, what company profit was, etc. The most I did was wait for the assistant to get a faxed bank statement so we'd know if there was actually money in the account on payday. However, times are changing.

Today, we are all aware that employees use someone else's account on Poslovna Hrvatska to see what the company's profit was last year, and what its credit rating is. And, of course, they compare their salary with the profit and other parameters they consider important.

Today, we are all aware of Tabu.hr, Adorio.hr… And again, external validation and parameters that your employees consider important.

Is it correct to state salary as net? Not really. But they're fine with it being expressed that way because it's easier to compare. After all, these portals are primarily for them, not for employers. They don't care who has how many children, where they reside, how much local surtax there is, whether some tax-exempt part is included…

Furthermore, there are hygiene and motivational factors. We wrote about Herzberg's two-factor theory and how hygiene factors, in the form of salary, must be met. But what about motivation as the second "factor" in Herzberg's two-factor theory? Of course, we can motivate our employees with rewards, even constant rewards. However, this isn't possible indefinitely. We, as adults, constantly reward ourselves materially, so remember the last time you were truly delighted by something (material) and how much the most expensive bicycle motivated you to explore the "wilds of the country" (instead of the Internet). Of course, the most expensive bicycle didn't compel you; it was something intrinsic. Perhaps a desire for health?

Skills and Generation Z

And now we return to skills. Yes, they are necessary for quality job performance. However, they are also needed for making decisions, for example, whether to quit, whether to focus on developing knowledge of one or another programming language, whether profit is strictly linked to my higher or lower salary… We could go on for a long time. For everything, one skill, one word is needed – judgment. And decision-making.

Understanding and applying newly learned information to solve a problem is the skill of active learning. Focusing on what others are saying and understanding the message the interlocutor is sending us is the skill of active listening. If you have difficulty negotiating or reconciling different social differences, you might lack negotiation skills. Considering all the pros and cons of a decision is the skill of judgment and decision-making.

Some time ago, all portals were flooded with news about testicular torsion in several students. This is an urgent condition resulting from the rotation of the testis with interruption of blood flow. Symptoms include acute scrotal pain with swelling, nausea, and vomiting. Diagnosis relies on physical examination and is confirmed by color Doppler ultrasound. It is treated urgently with manual repositioning followed by surgical intervention.

The "cause" of this news was a TikTok challenge by ten-year-olds. But it was in line with their skills (and knowledge and need for external validation). That's just how it is, however we look at it.

Over time, we build our skills, and skill growth should be proportional to age. In most companies, especially in the ICT sector, Generation Z is prevalent. Do we know what their aforementioned skills are? Are they below average? Average? Above average?

Employee Learning and Development

Most companies, or so we hope, will send their employees to professional training.

Generally, the importance of education in employee development is often underestimated. However, investing in employee education can have numerous benefits for employers. Educated employees are usually more effective in their jobs and are more likely to stay with the company for longer. Additionally, employees whose education is paid for by their employer are more likely to feel loyalty and gratitude towards the company. Furthermore, trends in people management point to the need for creating generalists and specialists.

However, what about skill development? Critical thinking, for example.

We'll all agree that Gen Z is very critical. But what about critical thinking?

In our earlier articles, we mentioned the fact that "man has disappeared" and that they, in a way, pay the price for digitalization.

However, when it comes to critical thinking, we are not innocent either. We have a weather app, we have a navigation app. When the "navigation lady" tells us "Turn on East," we gently scratch our heads (if we're polite). The app helps us park. The iPhone counts our steps. Shazam tells us what band/singer/song it is.

Let's go back to navigation. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have found that navigation assistance devices cause us to lose gray matter in the hippocampus.

Also, in an article published by the National Library of Medicine – National Center for Biotechnology Information, we can find an article stating that educators are concerned about Generation Z's inexperience with higher-order critical thinking and their tendency to give up or move on when faced with challenges. While acknowledging that this generation brings technological skills and an inclusive mindset that will advance their profession, instructors are challenged to adapt teaching strategies to promote critical thinking and foster perseverance.

Generation Z in the Workplace

Generation Z entering the job market today is educated, smart, cognitively capable, eager for knowledge, and competent, but… Imagine being "born" with an app for this or that…

Generation Z is critical of many things; however, it's not that Generation Z has lost critical thinking skills, but rather that they may never have fully developed.

And so, concerning skills like active listening or learning, reasoning, supervision, critical thinking… the question isn't whether we should develop them, but why we haven't already developed them in our employees.

Ultimately, even if they resign, at least we'll be sure that the decision was made for the right reasons.

And it is up to us, as employers and HR professionals, to do everything to ensure they don't leave. And that the decision to stay is made for the right reasons.