We’ve all seen how AI’s capabilities have developed. Over the last few years, the technology has grown at a rate comparable to a famously voracious caterpillar. But, as more and more skills get snapped up by AI, those skills subsequently become less desirable among human employees. One day you might be writing a job description for a new hire, only to discover half of it’s been made obsolete a month later. (If it’s an entry-level job, it might even be the whole thing…!)

So when you’re designing training & development programs for your existing employees, what’s actually worth the time and effort to work on? What human skills will survive AI’s journey to becoming a beautiful butterfly?

According to many voices in the HR space, it’s mostly about what we tend to refer to as “soft skills”. One such voice is Jen Paterno, Senior Behavioural Scientist at CoachHub, who says the word “soft” is misleading. She, among other industry experts, have begun referring to things like emotional intelligence, curiosity and social influence as Power Skills instead. This term, it’s suggested, respects these skills as “the foundation of leadership in a world transformed by automation.”

So let’s take a look at these skills, among others, and what they really mean for the workplace in 2026.

 

1. Technical Literacy

“AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows how to use it will.” If you can stop your eyes from rolling at the cliché for a second, consider the nugget of truth that sits in it. As this technology continues its campaign across the working world, it requires more and more people with the capability to use it effectively – it’s not enough just to buy a shiny new AI tool and hope it works by itself. Either you can hire in new talent with those skills, or you can foster them within your own workforce and wipe out a bucketload of friction.

That may seem like an obvious solution, but you’d actually be in the minority: Randstad’s Global Survey reports job openings requiring AI skills have increased over 2000% since March 2023, but only 13% of employees have received AI training. That’s a gigantic gap that sorely needs filling.

2. Communication

Raise your hand if you’ve asked ChatGPT to write or rewrite an email for you. Let’s be honest, it’s probably one of the most popular uses of the platform. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not important for people to know how to communicate effectively.

For one thing, employees can’t run their responses through AI when they’re in a meeting or at a conference (yet). But also, perhaps more pertinently, they need to be able to communicate with AI effectively. AI bots are only as good as the instructions they’re given. So, your employees must develop their ability to articulate themselves clearly, concisely and consistently so they can get the best possible results from their prompts. Not to mention this certainly won’t hurt the efficiency of person-to-person communication within your business, especially with regard to neurodivergent employees.

3. Curiosity & Critical Thinking

Among human vs AI skills, critical thinking is arguably the most crucial. This is because there’s a lot of things AI can do, if it is told to do it. It can go over your meeting notes and point out agenda items that didn’t get enough attention. It can go back through your emails and compare what clients were promised this month to what they were promised last month. It can assess a recent political news story and forecast how that will affect the company over the next few weeks. But it won’t if you don’t ask it to. We said earlier AI is only as good as its instructions, but it’s also only as curious as its user.

Even asking it to perform these tasks takes a certain level of reflection, initiative and critical thought. Cultivating those skills within your teams, however, will mean they won’t have to ask AI to do it for them. It will mean they can catch problems before they arise, develop deeper insight into their work and strategize more effectively for the future.

Training these skills is simpler than you might think. In an article from Training Journal, the term Reflective Intelligence refers to “the ability to pause, analyse one’s experience, and extract insight. It is awareness in motion, the skill that keeps learning alive in a fast, automated world.” The key word here is pause. Real reflection requires space to think. Establishing a company policy of taking five minutes after a meeting to write down answers to questions like “What was learned in this meeting?”, “Has this meeting flagged any potential challenges?” or “How did this meeting help the business?” will grant that space.

Of course, there won’t always be nice, helpful answers to these questions. But, it’s more about the thought encouraged by considering them. As Training Journal put it, “Machines can suggest an answer, but only people can decide what that answer means within a context of emotion, ethics, or long-term purpose.”

4. Emotional & Ethical Intelligence

Now, there are some things you simply, literally – and sometimes legally – cannot trust an AI to do. Those things often relate to the handling of sensitive emotional or ethical situations. Managing a vulnerable person’s mental health, for example, or making a split-second decision in a dangerous environment. These decisions must be made by a human, quite frankly because a human has to be responsible one way or another.

Now, this might not seem like it relates to a typical office job, but it’s a matter of scale. Your employees hopefully won’t have to deal with someone’s mental health crisis, but they’ll certainly need to navigate a colleague or a client who’s having a bad day. They’ll need to pick up on the non-verbal cues that someone might be burnt out or overwhelmed and know how to deal with that. Emotional intelligence is a crucial part of managing your relationships with other people, and AI can’t do that for you. Yet as it stands, emotional intelligence is a pretty rare trait; Forbes reports that only 36% of professionals have it, even though over 90% of top performers score highly in it. Encouraging these skills within your teams will create a more cohesive and positive working environment.

With ethical intelligence, this is where accountability comes in. Consulting AI regarding vital decisions that may impact people’s lives is all well and good… until something goes wrong. At that point, you can’t point the finger at the robot and say “It’s their fault.” The buck must stop with a person. So, it’s far better to educate employees on ethics and reasoning and remove the need for AI’s influence in decision-making. Yes, a wrong decision may still be made now and then, but the person who made it will at least be able to justify it.

5. Creativity

Yes, AI can produce a painting of a Nissan Micra in the style of Vincent Van Gogh in five seconds and yes, it can whip up a symphony scored entirely by vuvuzelas (if you like that sort of thing). But, to make the point a third time, it has to be told to do those things. AI possesses all the creative skills of a whole liberal arts college, but it doesn’t actually have any ideas. It can’t get inspired. It won’t get a lightbulb moment in the middle of the night and scramble for the nearest notebook. For now, that experience remains entirely human.

Creativity doesn’t flow exclusively through paintbrushes and pianos. It can also flow through an Excel sheet or in a strategy meeting. It can change the way a line manager motivates their reports, or the way a salesperson communicates with a uniquely difficult prospect. AI can certainly help with all of these things, but it’ll never get the ball rolling. It’ll never ask “What if?”

It may seem odd to get anyone who isn’t in marketing to attend a creativity workshop. But building a foundation of creativity helps all professionals in all departments. It brings fresh ideas that can vastly improve the way things are done in your organisation. It will also improve everyone’s ability to adapt to new circumstances (which will undoubtedly come about when those new ideas take hold…)

Conclusion

There’s a common theme running through these skills. All of them can be found in great leaders. As AI continues to take on the repetitive legwork of all our jobs, what will be left to us is the responsibility to be decisive, compassionate and creative in a way that is required from those in positions of authority. This is just as well, too – who wants a robot for a boss?

Training and developing these skills within your team isn’t just about improving today’s workplace. It’s an investment in tomorrow’s, too. What would your teams look like if everyone had the skills and the confidence to be a fantastic leader?

Of course, we’re still quite a way off from being able to give all of our work to AI. But, there’s already a great deal that can be made quicker, easier and more efficient by the technology – perhaps more than you might think.

Want to discover how AI could transform your workplace today? Then join us at HR Technologies UK this April, where all innovators in people tech will gather to bring about the future of work.