Human skills as important as ‘oven-ready’ tech skills

So says the CEO of the CIPD, the UK’s professional body for HR, learning & development, Peter Cheese.

Speaking last Friday [16 May 2025] at the Houses of Parliament launch of the UK Hiring Taskforce, Cheese told the 200 attendees that at the same time, however, instead of filling skills gaps, employers are also looking for potential in applicants through characteristics such as “attitude, aptitude to learn human skills like collaboration and communication, and critical thinking. The more we debate the future of work, the more we debate about AI impacting jobs and skills in the future, the more we are coming back to these core skills”.

Humanities knowledge is part of building such capabilities into organisations, Cheese said: “People talk now about the half-life of job skills is somewhere between three and four years. In other words, every three or four years, we’re going to have to retrain half of our workforce.”

Access to and retention of talent are a top issue for business leaders around the world, with “almost every organisation saying they can’t find all the skills. But then you question them on that, they say yes, we’ve been getting too focused on hiring what I’ve often described as ‘oven-ready employees’ and they don’t exist – partly because we are changing the nature of jobs at an ever-increasing rate”, Cheese said. “So, the reality of how we approach recruiting has got to be expanded from the point of view of the employers as well.”

He asked the audience: “So why do we seem to be reverting back to saying ‘I just want tech skills’? We know the world is not, unfortunately, going to be a better place if all we have are a lot of tech people. Frankly, we need humanity to work alongside that as well.”

Cheese has been appointed to the UK Hiring Taskforce steering committee.

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