With the emergence of new-age technologies and ongoing disruption due to automation, the organizations around the world are going through talent crisis. The companies are investing in workforce and people to build digital workforcce.

However, in a recent report by World Economic Forum and Sea survey of 56,000 ASEAN citizens aged 15–35 from six countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), it was found that youths value soft skills over hard skills for the future.

The report reveals that the three skills considered the most important were:

• Creativity and innovation
• Language skills
• The ability to use technology (e.g. social media and e-commerce).

The skills youths value vary by country, perhaps influenced by the composition of important local industries. For instance:

• Thai youths placed relatively higher importance on skills such as emotional intelligence and communication, which could be a nod to the importance of the tourism and hospitality industries.
  
  
• Youths in the Philippines placed more importance on technology design and software programming, which could be due to the strong presence of the business process outsourcing industry.
  
  
• Given Singapore’s push towards higher value-added activities, Singaporean youths gave more weight to analytical and critical thinking.

Overall, given the importance placed on soft skills, it’s no surprise that ASEAN youths regarded themselves in stronger in soft skills than hard skills.

In fact, the four lowest ranked skills were mostly hard skills in the STEM area such as technology design (e.g. software programming); language skills, maths and science. 

The top four skills, three were soft skills including resilience and employability; emotional intelligence and communication; as well as creativity and innovation.

The report highlights that combining the views of ASEAN youths on which skills are important, and which they are good at, perceived skills gaps that stand out were: Software design and programming and Language skills

The report also found that ASEAN youths saw a strong need to upgrade and invest in their skills to stay relevant. Across the six countries, majority of (52.4 percent) youths believed they must upgrade their skills constantly and some 9.2 percent believed their current skill set is already outdated. Another 20 percent felt their current skills will last for another five or 10 years before they need to be retrained. While only 18.5 percent believed their current skills will last most of their lives.