In the World of Work, Why Are ‘Soft’ or ‘Durable’ Skills So…. Hard?
By Jasmine Burton
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a set of skills that was useful everywhere and never went out of style? Wouldn’t it be amazing if anybody could learn them and demonstrate them to others in a simple, straightforward way?
We humans do have a set of skills like that!
My colleagues and I call them durable skills because they are so long-lasting, but they’ve been called many things, like essential skills, professional skills, and — especially — soft skills. It seems so obvious, right? Our careers should flow at least as much on our mastery of the relevant and universal skill as on highly focused technical skills. After all, it takes considerable durable skills to even attempt to acquire ever-changing technical skills, so shouldn’t they be prioritized? But alas, no matter how much we all agree on their utter primacy and importance, durable skills still come in second place when compared to technical skills as it relates to upward and economic mobility.
As I mentioned in our last post, durable skills “are hard to measure, define, and standardize.” This is a problem because we as humans need to be able to understand each other’s durable skills before we can make judgment calls (such as hiring) based on them. But understanding an individual’s proficiency in soft skills has always been a challenge, even after extensive in-person interview processes. Part of the reason for this, uncovered by psychologists, is that peoples’ patterns of behavior — a key determinant of professional skills — are driven significantly by the context in which they are operating. In other words, an individual can be strong in a certain durable skill in one work context but much less strong in the same durable skill in a different context.
Another challenge is that skills in this domain are often in the eye of the beholder. This means that an individual assessment of durable skills is often based on the reviewer’s own preferences and strengths, rather than being a binary pass/fail or following a “gradable” standard. These challenges and others have stymied the development of measurement for durable skills, and in particular have limited their adoption among employers, who have historically found them inaccurate, lacking any real descriptive or predictive quality, and/or overly risky based on legal issues stemming from EEOC regulation from the 1970s.
Given this context, my Common Group colleagues and I have partnered up with America Succeeds, CompTIA, and others to try to crack this nut once and for all. Together, we are working to overcome these challenges in a human- and equity-centered way, because we think if we do, implementation and widespread adoption could become feasible and world-changing. When we close our eyes and think about what could be, we see a world where opportunity and economic success are far more abundant and evenly distributed. The future we see is nothing less than a more equitable tomorrow.
We have a pretty crisp vision of what this could look like. In fact, what you’re about to read is Part 1 of a two-part speculative design fiction where we describe how the durable skills assessment or Golden Ticket story could play out. This President’s Day, we are using future-back thinking to collectively envision the possibilities for tomorrow — like many of America’s equity-minded Presidents that enacted positive, liberatory change for our country’s systematically oppressed communities. Our hope is that this will inspire you to join us in making change, too.
IMAGINE IF YOU WILL
It’s the year 2033. Despite numerous obstacles, we have witnessed enormously positive global shifts in business and society over the past years. These shifts can largely be attributed to the awakening of our society’s collective consciousness that placed a renewed value on both people and our planet following the summer of 2020.
Many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets have made significant headway, including SDG Target 4.4 which sought to “substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship by 2030.” The global success related to this goal is a product of leapfrog technologies created with equity-centered approaches, servant leadership demonstrated in multi-sectoral partnerships and the widespread reach of durable skills. This has been the decade of Democratized Innovation in the workforce development and education sector.
TIME TRAVEL: BACK TO THE BEGINNING
The catalyst of this new age first took root in 2023. This was the year that America Succeeds, CompTIA, and Common Group embarked on a collaboration to create a rubric for measuring durable skills. Their founding R&D work ensured that the durable skills rubric was truly human- and equity-centered, intentionally designed to avoid historically biased and oppressive norms while at the same time being useful and intuitive for a wide array of hiring managers and job seekers.
How did they do it? Together with 19 diverse employers and early-career professionals, they took the first step in pioneering the basic science underpinning several powerful products, including a reliable durable skills measurement tool for all, or as its been colloquially called — the Golden Ticket. Over the course of five intense days in New Orleans, this group produced the first prototype of the durable skills rubric, which catalyzed a rich equity-centered design research program from March-May 2023.
Through this research program, the voices of people who had historically experienced various forms of unfair exclusion in the labor market were documented and heard. Their feedback and product validation insights were reflected into the rubric beta prototype — and ultimately into the many derivative products built around the rubric, ranging from educators’ tools deployed in K–12 classrooms all the way up to leadership development tools deployed in corporate conference rooms. This founding R&D infused equity into the durable skills ecosystem at large, which was transformative.
Simultaneously, 2023 was a year when Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that he had “eliminated the requirement of a four-year college degree for the vast majority of jobs in the state government” on the heels of similar changes made in Utah and Maryland. This created a ripple effect across the U.S. public and private sectors, where the lived and learned experiences of job seekers were truly valued by employers because many of the outcomes of those experiences suddenly became demonstrable and measurable. This led to increased confidence and livable-wage jobs amongst people historically and unfairly excluded from various parts of the labor market. The cycle of intergenerational poverty was broken amongst record numbers of families, and economic mobility was finally within reach. Over time, however, unintended consequences started to crop up. Will the idea of a Golden Ticket based on durable skills be strong enough to overcome these challenges?
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this two-part speculative design fiction that will be inspired by insights from our next phase of work, which will include equity-centered design research to inform the next iteration of the durable skills rubric prototype. Keep following along for more learnings and insights to come!
Special Thanks to Lisa Baird, Naomi Graham-Stanford, and George Vinton from the Common Group for their collective time and support in crafting this message.
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About Jasmine Burton: Jasmine [she/her] works to dismantle barriers for structurally excluded people. She is a designer, entrepreneur, and social-inclusion specialist who uses design thinking, business strategy, and evidence-based research to build a more inclusive world. For a decade, she has led the sanitation nonprofit Wish for WASH as the founding CEO in addition to leading innovative ESG projects through her independent consulting firm Hybrid Hype. More recently, Jasmine has jumped into the world of workforce development and education innovation as the first senior manager of social-impact consulting firm Common Group.
To learn more about Durable Skills, please visit https://americasucceeds.org/policy-priorities/durable-skills.
