Don't skip this chapter thinking it's all about IT or engineering-type skills. It's not. “Technical skills” spans the huge variety of “hard” skills that are necessary for many jobs. With the rise of automation, we could potentially lose these vital technical skills as more tasks are given over to machines and fewer people choose to learn technical skills. And if we lose technical skills among the human workforce, we risk losing them forever within the space of a generation.

So while we all know the nature of work is changing, and workplaces will undoubtedly become more automated, there's still enormous value in technical skills. In fact, in the complex, hybrid workplaces of the future—where tasks and goals are accomplished through a blend of machine and human power—technical skills will become more valuable than ever.

What Are Technical Skills?

As you can probably tell from the previous two chapters, technical skills around coding, AI, and data science are already in high demand. That demand will continue to grow. Yet the term “technical skills” stretches far beyond technology and IT fields.

Technical skills are, in essence, the “hard” practical skills needed to do a job successfully. If you're an accountant, your professional accountancy skills are technical skills. Same goes for a plumber, nurse, truck driver, lawyer, teacher, hairstylist, project manager, carpenter, and so on. These all require knowledge and skills that are particular to that field, and you may gain those skills through a combination of training, education, on-the-job learning, and good old-fashioned experience. Even jobs that don't immediately appear to be technical or specialized often require some sort of technical skill, such as using a customer database or point-of-sale technology.

Technical skills may therefore be digital, or they may be scientific (think of a biologist, or someone working in nuclear energy), or they may also be practical and physical, requiring knowledge of specific equipment or tools. It's a broad church, basically.

Why Do Technical Skills Matter?

These skills matter because they're essential to getting the job done well. If an accountant lacks the skills and knowledge to properly manage a business's finances or file tax returns, they won't be a successful accountant, no matter how great they are at the “softer” skills like communication and collaboration.

(Let me stress that the inherently human “soft” skills such as creativity, communication, collaboration, and decision-making will still be highly prized in the workplace, and you can read more about these must-have skills in later chapters.)

The fact that technical skills matter likely isn't news to you. It's probably obvious that you need to be proficient in the practical skills related to any job. So you might be wondering why I've devoted a chapter of this book to the topic. It's because we're reaching a crucial tipping point in the nature of work—the point where technology is advancing faster than ever and more human tasks are being given over to machines. Far from making technical skills less important, I believe this rapid evolution will make technical skills more important than ever—albeit the specifics of those skills may change as technology evolves.

In fact, the most in-demand jobs in the world all require some form of technical skill. As of 2021, these most in-demand jobs included nurse, teacher, physical therapist, construction worker, web developer, and financial advisor.¹

If we're brutally honest, those jobs that don't require much in the way of technical skills will ultimately disappear. These are the jobs comprised of easily repeatable, easily automated tasks—tasks that are usually better suited to machines. Let's take a checkout worker in a grocery store as an example. I mean no disrespect to checkout workers, and I know so many customers value the human interaction with a cashier. But if we look purely at the practical side of the job—scanning items and facilitating payment—we already know those tasks can be done by machines. Walk into any mid-sized or large grocery store, and you'll see self-service checkouts. In many stores in the UK, these self-service checkouts outnumber regular checkout workers, especially at off-peak times. And in the US, Amazon has introduced highly automated grocery stores, called Amazon Go, that have eliminated checkouts altogether.

In the long run, we may not have any human checkout workers at all. We need only look at obsolete jobs from the past, such as elevator operator, film projectionist, and VCR repairperson, to know that certain jobs die out over time as technology evolves. And in the future, anything that can be easily automated, will be. This means a whole host of jobs may ultimately disappear, including things like travel agents (thanks to online travel booking sites), telemarketers (hello, annoying automated marketing calls), taxi drivers (driverless taxis are already in use in Phoenix, Arizona), sports referees (thanks to video assistant referee [VAR] systems), and even bookkeepers (given the pace of change in bookkeeping software).

I cannot stress enough that the jobs that remain, and those new jobs that are created, will all undoubtedly be affected and augmented by technology in one way or another. A hairstylist in a salon, for example, is unlikely to be replaced by a robot hairstylist anytime soon, but that doesn't mean the job won't be augmented by new technologies. All professions are evolving constantly, and hairstyling is no different. In the not-too-distant future, your stylist will be able to use augmented reality mirrors—mirrors that overlay a digital image over your real-life reflection—to show you what your new hairstyle will look like before they've snipped a single lock of hair, or let you see whether a new color would suit you before you physically take the plunge. The technology exists and is already in use in certain salons.²

Likewise, truck drivers are learning to work with autonomous vehicle technology that can take on some or all of the driving responsibility, at least on highways if not in depots and busy urban areas. Radiologists are aided by AI-enabled scanners that can interpret scans and carry out routine reading and measurement tasks on medical imaging, freeing up radiologists to work on more complex diagnostic cases and to have more time for the treatment and management of diseases. Accountants are already leaving many of the basic financial tasks to software and instead focusing more on business advisory services that are geared towards helping business owners run better, more profitable businesses. Plumbers and electricians increasingly need to be able to work with smart meters and renewable technologies. Farmers can now use an array of tools that augment or automate farming practices—from deciding what to plant and when, to picking fruit. Data scientists can deploy AIs for the nuts-and-bolts analysis work, while focusing their time on more strategic data tasks.

Although almost all jobs will be augmented by new technologies, we'll still need people with technical knowledge and skills—from job-specific professional skills to the digital and data skills I talked about in Chapters 1 and 2. We don't want to lose crucial technical skills. If there were no human radiologists anymore, for example, who would further the field of radiology and ensure diagnostics and treatment continues to get better? Having people with technical skills, whatever those skills may be, is what allows any industry or sector to evolve. It's how we drive industries forward and build the solutions of the future. And it's how we get the best out of technology.

What Are the Essential Technical Skills?

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, since essential skills will vary greatly from job to job. The key takeaway here is that technical skills will continue to be important—indeed, will grow in importance—in our rapidly changing world.

In terms of key skills, broadly speaking, we're talking about the non-IT professional skills required for your job, as well as the skills needed to work alongside technology. These include the digital literacy skills I talked about in Chapter 1, the data literacy skills from Chapter 2, and the cyber-threat awareness skills coming up in Chapter 4, plus the practical skills applicable to your job or the career you want to move into—whether that is bricklaying, medical image analysis, or being able to drive an 18-wheeler truck.

All of those skills aside, some of the essential technical skills for 21st-century work are likely to include:

• Customer relationship management
• Project management
• Social media management
• Video and other content creation
• Product development and product lifecycle management
• Technical writing, or being able to explain complex subjects in plain English
• Mechanical maintenance

Obviously not all of these will apply to all jobs, but it gives an idea of the (non-IT) technical and practical skills that many employers are likely to value.

Looking specifically at IT and technology jobs, some of the most in-demand technical skills will be around:

• Programming languages
• AI and machine learning
• Data science, data analysis, and data visualization
• Cybersecurity
• Cloud computing
• 5G
• Internet of things
• Software development
• User experience (UX)
• Extended reality (augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality)
• Robotics
• Quantum computing
• Blockchain

Again, I'm not talking about technology professionals needing to be proficient in all of these skills. Each are specialisms in their own right. That said, a basic knowledge of all tech trends will be increasingly important as technologies converge and influence each other.

How to Improve Your Technical Skills

The evolution of professional and technology-related skills is faster than ever, which makes keeping up a bit of a challenge (and that's putting it mildly). We must all expect fast innovation and rapid change. But this also presents a great opportunity for everyone. In the 21st-century workplace, those who possess and maintain technical skills will no doubt be more desirable to employers. And for businesses, investing in technical skills is a vital part of driving business success and staying ahead of the competition.

As for how to develop technical skills, that will depend on the specific job and industry. But let's look at some broad tips for individuals and employers.

Key Takeaways

In this chapter, we've learned that:

• Despite the rapid changes in our working lives, and increasing digitization, technical skills will still be an important future skill.
• In general, this means investing in the practical and physical skills needed to do a job effectively, as well as the skills needed to work alongside technology.
• Remember, this is an area where skills will grow stale relatively quickly, especially as new technologies come on the scene—and this will apply to almost all industries (consider our hairstylist and farmer examples from earlier in the chapter). So you must be prepared to continually refresh your technical skills.

Before we move onto the essential softer skills, there's one more technical topic that we need to address: cyber-threat awareness. Let's explore how every employee, at every level of the business, must take responsibility for keeping individuals and companies safe.