Digitalization makes soft skills more important

Is digitalization a major part of your task as the new director?

“It’s a matter that sets about 30% of my agenda, but it’s by no means the leading aspect. It’s a bit of a risky statement, but the theme of digitalization sometimes has some features of the Internet hype in the late 1990s. Back then, just having a website counted as a business model. Almost the same now applies to digitalization. But digitalization isn’t a cure-all or an end in itself. Many of today’s resources are already digital and despite digitalization it’s still about matching people and jobs. So if you ask me whether digitalization is important, then my answer is yes. But if you ask whether we should be confused by it, then definitely not.”

So what does digitalization actually mean for you?

“We need to distinguish between what it means, internally, for our way of working and, externally, how it will affect the environment within which we operate. Digitalization enables us to improve our services and create greater value. Perhaps the biggest danger of digitalization is that people will blindly follow what the system tells them, for example when an algorithm makes a prediction about the suitability of a candidate. We’re therefore challenging our people to continue to think critically – even more than before. If you fail to do so, you run the risk of becoming too far removed from your core process, which has become far less easy to comprehend thanks to automation and digitalization. We also want our people to constantly think about how processes can be adjusted and improved. In the past, that involved discussions between consultants; basically, it was entirely analogue. Things have become very different now that processes have been defined within digital systems. Process improvements mustn’t come just from smart techies in the background; they need to be fed by the market.”

So you need to understand exactly what clients and candidates want?

“That’s right, but that’s becoming rather different. In the past you had a lot of contacts with clients and candidates about what were often routine administrative matters. You built up the relationship based on all those contacts. Automation and digitalization have largely done away with those contacts. So digitalization offers enormous opportunities: there’s scope for devoting more time and attention to the real connection with the client or the candidate. There’s also a great need for this within both groups, which is why ‘soft skills’ – the social and interpersonal skills needed to make that connection real – are becoming increasingly important. That’s why we devote a great deal of time and attention to them in our internal training programme.”

What are the downsides of digitalization?

“This brings us to the effects on the environment within which we work. In a lot of the sectors where we bring clients and candidates together, digitalization has led to a rapidly widening skills gap. It means that more and different skills are required in order to remain successful in a given job, so the need for retraining and refresher training is therefore increasing. There are groups within society that are having to pay the price for that. People who aren’t able to acquire those new skills find themselves marginalised and see their distance to the labour market increasing. Society – including government, companies, employees, and trade unions – has a moral duty to create a safety net for those people.”

Your values – we care, we share, we dare – indicate how you aim to work. So what about the “why” aspect? In other words, what is your actual purpose?

“Our ultimate goal is to help people and companies get the best out of themselves. In the case of companies, we do that by thinking along with them about which people they will need in the future and what we should do together on the labour market so as to meet that need. In the case of candidates and our own people, it’s all about their continuing to develop. But of course it’s not enough to just assert that people need to develop new competencies and that they need to work on their employability. It’s also a matter of providing leadership. That’s where mutual dependence reappears. We’ll have to help our people in that regard.”

Does that apply to you, too, in your new role? What are you going to be doing?

It definitely applies to me too! My role is mainly about setting the pace and indicating the urgency. Basically, it’s about connecting the long term with what we need to do today and tomorrow. In the past, if things weren’t running smoothly you might have waited to see how they would develop in the next quarter, but that’s no longer possible. Developments are happening so quickly; not addressing something immediately means by definition that you’re going to lag behind. That’s why I expect my management team to raise issues that we need to change right away – immediately! There’s a good reason why various smaller, specialised parties in this sector are growing far faster than the big boys – it’s because those smaller parties are a lot more ‘agile’. Fortunately, our company displays a great deal of creativity, agility, and willingness to change and improve. We intend making full use of those qualities in the years ahead.”