Report: Employee Skills for 21st Century New Zealand Businesses

This report delves into the critical employee skill sets necessary for New Zealand businesses to thrive in the 21st century, emphasizing the importance of innovation, learning, career, life, and digital literacy skills. It highlights the significance of communication, collaboration, analytical thinking, ethical standards, problem-solving, and creativity. The report references the 'Aotearoa New Zealand Skills Pledge' and discusses the need for employees to adapt to rapid changes in working styles. It emphasizes the importance of reskilling, restructuring, and modifying existing skills to meet market trends and overcome challenges. The report also includes references to relevant books and journals, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic. The report also highlights the importance of creativity, collaboration and the need for employees to be solution centric and maintain the both virtual and physical workstations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Topic: Employee skill sets required for 21st century New Zealand businesses..........................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

Topic: Employee skill sets required for 21st century New Zealand businesses
21st century is the digital age world which stands for innovation and growth. It is that
time where competition is at the highest levels and survival is only dependent on knowledge.
This is mainly imperative in gaining competitive advantages in any type of business. However,
skills set by the employees is required to lay the foundation of deeper learning to move with the
fast paced economic growth at the workplace. For this, the skills required involve progressive
education and is segregated into innovation and learning skills, career and life skills and digital
literacy skills. Recently, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardren has just launched
'Aotearoa New Zealand Skills Pledge” on that emphasis on training and re-skilling aspects by the
year of 2025. The aim is to polish the skills set of the employees to sustain the competitiveness
and enhance the productivity (Boost for employee skills and training, 2019). The motive is to
help both the staff and the companies to deal with the rapid changes in working styles.
In regard to this, the major objective is to know about the current skills trends that bring
transparency to the recruiters while hiring the employees. These involve communication,
collaboration, analytical thinking, ethical standards with accountability, problem solving and
creativity. Such skills are useful in enhancing the organizational culture and help in developing
the intellectual and social skills of individuals. For instance, creativity can be improved by using
the digital platforms and tools that drives the problem solving capacities. It makes the employees
to search, analyse and explore several ways and approaches to bring something new in terms of
personal and economic growth as well (Gibbs, Steel & McKinnon, 2015). Another key skill that
is important is collaboration that leads to mixing of several talents and skills to establish an
atmosphere of team work and healthy competition. This aids the employees to be solution centric
and maintain the both virtual and physical workstations.
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Furthermore, such skills is going to extend the shelf life of an employee by engaging
them and minimising the communication gaps. It also helps in bridging the competency gaps and
give a fair opportunity to make the productivity, profitability and effectiveness in more profound
ways. It has been seen that there is a lack of technical expertise and over-reliance on the
technological tools and methods that has led to adverse influence on the employees work ethics.
Thus, the mentioned program would give a medium to reskill, restructure or modify the existing
skills that are essential in this era (Fukuyama, 2017). Moreover, employee skills must always be
in sync with the market trends to overcome the challenges and drawbacks that pull the strings
and bring ineffectiveness at the workplace. Henceforth, these skills must be recognised in
accordance to an individual's abilities and capacities to polish the financial literacy and
implement the cross cultural fluency.
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Illustration 1: Revised grouping to make it suitable for 21st century competencies
(Source: Finegold and Notabartolo, 2011)

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Fukuyama, F. (2017). State building: Governance and world order in the 21st century. Profile
Books.
Gibbs, S. F., Steel, G. D., & McKinnon, A. E. (2015). Are workplace end-user computing skills
at a desirable level? A New Zealand perspective.
Online
Boost for employee skills and training. 2019. [Online]. Available
through:<http://btob.co.nz/business-news/boost-employee-skills-training/>.
Finegold,D and Notabartolo, AS., 2011. 21st-Century Competencies and Their Impact: An
Interdisciplinary Literature Review. [Pdf]. Available through:<https://hewlett.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/21st_Century_Competencies_Impact.pdf>.
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