Building a Resilient Workforce
Meeting Employer Demand for Social and Emotional Skills in the 21st Century
October 24, 2023
Signal49 Research, on behalf of the Future Skills Centre, is exploring how Canadian employers identify and assess social and emotional skills (SES) in new and potential employees.
We know from prior Signal49 Research work that SES such as creativity, empathy, and intercultural communication are in high demand. We want to provide employers with the tools and understanding necessary to meet this demand through the recruitment and development of socially and emotionally skilled talent.
This project will:
- Analyze the types of SES that employers are looking for and examine how these needs may differ by region, industry, and role.
- Explore how employers currently assess SES during the hiring process and any challenges they face.
- Identify useful tools and resources that can be used to improve SES assessment during the hiring process.
Incorporating employer perspectives
Signal49 Research has done extensive research on the importance of SES to the future of work. Most recently, we’ve explored best practices for teaching and evaluating these skills within post-secondary education.
What’s missing is a deeper understanding of employers’ perspectives and needs when it comes to SES. Connecting employer insights with our prior work on how to train and assess SES in post‑secondary contexts can help fill this gap, aligning employer needs with approaches to skill development and assessment.
The demand for socially and emotionally skilled talent
Based on an analysis of Canadian job-posting data, we found that employer demand for SES is higher than ever before: Nearly 80 per cent of job postings in 2022 listed SES as a requirement. These skills are clearly valued by employers, but what specific skills are they looking for?
According to the same job-posting data, employers value interpersonal skills such as advocacy, teamwork, and communication, and personal qualities such as flexibility, leadership, and attention to detail, above all others.
Table 1
What specific SES are employers looking for?
| SES group | Definition | Per cent of job postings (2022) |
|---|---|---|
| Cognitive | Core mental skills that are necessary to acquire and manipulate information, including how people learn and reason (e.g., ability to learn, multi-tasking) | 9.80% |
| Resource management | The ability to organize and allocate resources such as time, human effort, strategies, and technology to projects or programs (e.g., planning, time management) | 38.60% |
| Interpersonal | Commonly referred to as “people skills,” these are key to interacting with others and include interpretation and communication of social signals (e.g., communication, conflict management, advocacy, teamwork) | 60.40% |
| Personal qualities | A catch-all term that covers skills or traits that don’t fit neatly into the other categories and includes skills like leadership, flexibility, and attention to detail | 60.90% |
Note: Skills groupings and definitions were determined by Vicinity Jobs.
Sources: Signal49 Research; Vicinity Jobs.
SES for the evolving workplace
Skills like leadership, resiliency, advocacy, and flexibility are essential for navigating and responding to modern advancements in the workplace. These skills play a vital role in helping individuals and organizations adapt and innovate in the face of automation and respond effectively to global crises such as climate change. To remain resilient in a time of constant flux, employers depend on workers who can think critically and problem-solve.
The path forward
As demand for SES in the workplace continues to grow, we need a plan to recruit and develop more socially and emotionally skilled workers. Without a long-term strategy for improving the supply of SES in the labour market, the current gap is likely to increase, impacting the productivity and innovation of Canadian businesses. In the long run, this could harm our national economy and stifle our global competitiveness. The time to act is now.
Diving deeper into employers’ SES needs
To help tackle the SES gap and future-proof Canadian businesses, we will conduct 60+ interviews with human resources professionals from organizations of all sizes across the country. We want to hear directly from them about their evolving SES needs.
Our goal is to provide educators, employers, and government with the knowledge and tools they need to meet the increasing demand for SES in the ever-changing workplace.
Social and emotional skills are key to resilience and adaptability in the 21st century.
If you are interested in learning more about this project, please contact Erin Rose Senior Research Associate, Education & Skills
FSC partners
The responsibility for the findings and conclusions of this research rests entirely with Signal49 Research.