Scott Snyder, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, says the three D’s -- design, development and data science -- will continue to be in high demand. “They are the core of developing new digital products and offerings,” he says. “There's no doubt a war for talent around those skills,” he points out, “but AI in particular has been almost an arms race for some companies, especially in the tech sector.”

But companies are also looking for talent with evolving skills in those areas as well. People analytics is one of the most in-demand skills when it comes to the next wave of data analytics, says Tavis. People who can blend behavioral sciences knowledge with analytics, software and coding skills will be highly sought after in all industries, she says.

“People who are actually able to work with data at a higher level, to understand what the data is telling us, to understand the accuracy and the biases that are built into the data, are in very high demand,” she says.

But people analytics is also becoming more domain specific. “The analytics field is evolving to a much more specialized analytics discipline in the domains of different fields,” Tavis says. Tech, healthcare, marketing, HR, they are all developing workers with people analytics skills based on particular expertise within that industry. 

The field is also evolving to focus more on predicting future behavior. “We’re seeing a move on the analytics maturity curve from using data to explain what happened in the past to a more predictive space,” Tavis says. “How do we predict what the organizations are going to need going forward?”
Digital Innovation

Workplace Culture 

But all of this focus on analytics and innovation doesn’t mean that traditional workplace skills like communication and collaboration aren’t important too. Janine Yancey, CEO of Emtrain, a company that provides workforce training in harassment prevention, bias awareness and interpersonal skills, says there’s an increasing need for people to develop a “workplace culture skill.” 

This skill includes social awareness, respectful behavior, managing of biases and ethical decision-making. “The workplace culture skill is critical in the modern workplace which hosts an increasingly diverse employee population in an increasingly demanding environment,” says Yancey.

Developing a workplace culture skillset in your workforce can be an antidote to the #MeToo movement and help solve other workplace issues of stereotyping, bias and discrimination, she says. “It also influences the ability of a team or a workforce to be high functioning and high performing, or not,” she points out.