Human Skills: From Conversations to Convergence

As automation and innovation drive ever-faster changes in occupations, workers will need to update their technology skills frequently. At the same time, another set of skills — with names like “soft” skills, power skills, and social skills — are anticipated to remain valuable across waves of technology-driven change. The MIT J-WEL Human Skills Matrix describes a set of these skills derived from analysis of 41 existing frameworks and interactions with more than 40 experts. Our robust research process resulted in a four-quadrant meta-structure that illustrates these social and higher-order thinking skills.

Relative to technological skills, these human skills are harder to define, harder to train, and harder to measure. Yet, their enduring value makes it essential to find ways to teach and assess them as a complement to existing STEM-oriented education.

In this workshop, J-WEL convened leading thinkers from academia, industry, edtech, and public policy to explore the essential human skills and attributes that workers need and how we might move towards a common understanding of these skills across the workforce ecosystem. The full-day event consisted of expert panels interspersed with structured breakout discussions. Our goal was to bring attention to the importance of these skills and provoke ongoing discussion and collaboration in the extended communities in which we work.

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