Spot New Tech Skills Emerging From the Workforce

Across industries, companies are investing unprecedented sums in reskilling programs to prepare employees for emerging technologies. These programs are typically designed around forecasts of which skills, such as data literacy, digital fluency, systems thinking, and adaptability, will become most valuable. However, the research conducted over three years on 10 European manufacturers navigating technological change found that the most relevant new skills workers developed were rarely the ones forecast.

Instead, these skills emerged organically as workers and managers worked together to integrate new tools into existing work processes or realized they couldn't adapt.

At an Italian furniture manufacturer, the head of the varnishing department noticed workers' concerns about equipment and devised their own methods for handling tasks. Instead of simply addressing these issues, he communicated his observations to the new head of production, leading to changes in the workflow. This led to the development of concrete skills, as craftspeople adapted to operating new CNC machinery, requiring them to express their judgment of quality and finish through digital settings and interfaces.

The head's emerging skill was a form of shop-floor diagnosis and reengineering, a bricoleur capability that sits between hands-on craft and process engineering, which was not initially recognized in job descriptions.

The most successful companies in managing technological transitions were not those with the best skills forecasts. Instead, they were those whose managers developed a habit of attention, allowing them to identify and harness emerging skills in the workforce before workers left to pursue those skills elsewhere. This practice, called SPOT, involves developing a particular habit of attention that enables managers to see what is already emerging in the work and to harness it before it's too late.