What was the most required business skill of 2024? We are used to the annual ‘word of the year’, but what, for 2024, goes against ‘brain rot’?
READ MORE: Six words to represent 2024: How many will be uttered by the end of 2025?
SHL, a talent intelligence platform, set out to determine the ‘Skill of the Year.’ The company itself is involved with job assessment and interview technology. This produces data on hard and soft skills, motivation, situational judgment, and cognitive ability.
Sara Gutierrez, Chief Science Officer, confirmed that upon a thorough review of 2024, the skill that drove success in the workforce was the ability to learn quickly. Ironically, a near opposite to brain rot.
For organizations, this insight can be strategic. SHL has seen a movement to skills-powered organizations, and the focus is shifting to the individual and their unique skills.
In an environment where roles and required skills are evolving rapidly, the ability to learn quickly has become essential. There has been an increased focus from organizations on human or behavioral skills as critical drivers of success over technical skills, given how swiftly advancements in technology and job demands shift.
Hence the top skill has been determined to be ‘learns quickly’.
Learning quickly reflects an individual’s agility, and capacity to absorb and apply knowledge at pace—qualities that empower them to stay relevant and excel as new challenges and technologies arise.
The ability to learn quickly is foundational to broader learning potential. When individuals develop this skill, they build a powerful capacity for continuous growth, which enables them to acquire new skills, adapt to evolving demands, and respond to complex challenges with confidence. This foundational skill serves as a gateway to lifelong learning, equipping employees to stay agile and resilient in a world where the only constant is change.
To improve their “learns quickly” ability, employees can adopt a few strategies, as recommended by SHL:
-Take notes while learning something new. This helps to create a clear reference that can be revisited for better retention.
– Ask questions to clarify understanding. If a concept is unclear, asking for an explanation or a different perspective can be valuable.
– Summarize new information in bullet points. After learning new processes, creating a concise summary reinforces understanding and retention.
– Practice skimming for key information. Quickly extracting essentials from documents is an invaluable skill for staying efficient.
– Dedicate time for challenging tasks. Set aside focused time to learn complex procedures, reviewing documentation multiple times if needed and marking key points.
By fostering a culture that encourages continuous learning and supports employees in developing this skill, companies can better equip their workforce to keep pace with industry advancements. To achieve this, organizations can implement learning programs, provide mentorship, and create spaces where employees feel comfortable asking questions and sharing knowledge.
