LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report recently analyzed LinkedIn data in order to find the most common skills in each of the following three categories:
Skills possessed by members who have been hired recently
Skills possessed by members who have received recruiter InMails recently
Skills included in recent paid jobs listings
By comparing the three, LinkedIn was able to identify the top 10 most in-demand skill sets overall, across all roles and industries represented anywhere on LinkedIn.
As these skills are the most desirable for employers and organizations today, they also make for the most relevant possible professional development topics that HR professionals should be pursuing in their own organizations right now.
Read on for the top ten in-demand professional development topics and how you can help build these skills in your organization.
The top 10 most in-demand professional development topics today
The most in-demand skills on LinkedIn as of 2023 are, in order:
- Management
- Communication
- Customer service
- Leadership
- Sales
- Project Management
- Research
- Analytical Skills
- Marketing
- Teamwork
There’s a good reason each of these skills appears on this list: all ten have broad applications, not only within a certain role or department, but across virtually all professional functions.
By focusing on these professional development topics, HR professionals will not only be able to equip their teams with the skills they need to excel in their current roles, they’ll also effectively prepare their entire organization for whatever comes next.
Resources for the most in-demand professional development topics
We want to help HR professionals develop valuable skills for their teams. Below, you’ll find LinkedIn Learning path resources for each of the top 10 most in-demand skills identified by the 2023 Workplace Learning Report. You can use these resources to build professional development programs guided by data and taught by some of the most experienced professionals working today. Let’s get started:
Management
Obviously, management skills will always be necessary for any organization’s continued success, but the skill set is especially critical in the modern work environment. As talent continues to churn faster and more frequently than ever and teams are fractured by remote and hybrid work models, organizations need managers capable of bridging these gaps to unite their workforces around shared goals and company culture.
Where to start:
Develop Your Skills as a New Manager: This eight course learning path helps new managers build the practical skills they’ll need to excel, focusing on how to build trust, delegate tasks, help direct reports set and achieve their goals, and more.
Develop the Skills to Manage Others Effectively: This eight-course learning path focuses on how managers can motivate employees to perform at their best, manage their team’s performance proactively, and take the lead in building a healthy work culture.
Communication
Communication is nothing less than the foundation of any successful enterprise. Constructively improving your workforce’s communication skills is one of the most meaningful ways to improve the effectiveness of your entire organization. And the best way to do that is to understand communication for what it is: a skill like any other, which can be practiced and perfected.
Where to start:
Develop Your Communication Skills and Interpersonal Influence: This-six course learning path will help your workforce learn helpful techniques for conveying information and ideas in a more engaging, clear, and organized fashion.
Improve Your Change Communication Skills: This six-course learning path focuses specifically on how to develop the kind of communication skills that will help your organization effectively navigate change, even in a crisis.
Customer service
In a professional environment more crowded and competitive than ever, the teams that set themselves apart will be the ones who provide the best customer support and service. Virtually every organization can benefit from improving their customer service skills in one way or another, and the best way to do that is to approach customer service training in a strategic and ongoing way.
Where to start:
Essential New Skills in Customer Support: This quick, four-course learning path uses LinkedIn data to identify the most up-to-date, in-demand customer service skills and provides the resources your team needs to start learning them.
Develop Your Customer Service Skills: This seven-course learning path teaches learners to develop a “service mindset” in order to build the skills to create memorably positive customer experiences.
Leadership
Strong leaders utilize many skill sets at once. They develop overall organizational strategy, communicate this strategy to the organization, and guide their teams to execute on this strategy effectively. Though leadership skills overlap with many of the other skills on this list, it’s critical to think of leadership as a professional development topic in and of itself, and develop it accordingly.
Where to start:
Develop Your Skills as a New or Emerging People Leader: This five-course learning path is the perfect way for new leaders to build the foundational skills they’ll need to build, communicate, and execute their strategic vision with their team.
Enhance Your Leadership Skills: This five-course learning path helps learners gain the leadership skills to not only inspire their teams, but also to provide much-needed stability, flexibility, and guidance when necessary.
Sales
The fact that sales skills are so highly in-demand right now demonstrates that they’re not just important for the sales team. When everyone in an organization develops a greater understanding of how to position and sell their products or services to their audience, every team and function will work together better.
Where to start:
Develop Your Sales Knowledge and Skills: This eight-course learning path combines sales fundamentals with helpful up-to-date skill courses detailing the latest developments in sales techniques and technology, including how to leverage automation to maximize sales effectiveness.
Essential New Skills in Sales: This five-course learning path uses LinkedIn data to identify newly in-demand sales skills, including virtual selling and purpose-driven sales, and compiles the most relevant courses for learning each.
Project management
It’s difficult to imagine any professional role in which project management skills aren’t essential. Whether a team member manages projects themselves or simply contributes to project execution, management skills help everyone perform their functions more efficiently and get their tasks done on time.
Where to start:
Advance Your Skills as a Project Manager: This seven-course learning path is an excellent primer on the fundamentals of project management skills for any team member looking for ways to improve their organization and efficiency.
Essential New Skills in Project Management: This six-course learning path uses LinkedIn data to identify up-and-coming project management skills—such as technical management and AI usage in project management—and compiles the most relevant courses for learning them.
Research
There is more information at the fingertips of every professional right now than at any other point in history. Learning how to make the most effective use of this information possible is one of the most impactful ways a professional can make themselves more effective in virtually any role.
Where to start:
Digital Literacy and Productivity Learning Pathway: This three-course learning path offers an excellent introduction to making more effective use of internet software and hardware to conduct research, share knowledge, and connect ideas to results.
Market Research: Qualitative: This specialized course focuses specifically on how to look past numbers and charts to conduct effective qualitative research, unlocking insights on not just who your customers are, but what they really want.
Analytical skills
No matter your team’s industry or specific job functions, chances are they work with data on a daily basis. Helping these team members develop a better understanding of how to collect, analyze, and leverage that data will allow your organization to constantly unlock new insights you’ll use to guide more informed strategies.
Where to start:
Build Your Analytical Skills with Statistical Analysis: This four-course learning path breaks down statistical analysis into four major categories: Basics, Probability, Using Data Sets, and Advanced Topics. If you’re looking for a primer on contemporary business analytics and data science, this is your first stop.
Improve Your Business Analysis Skills: This eight-course learning path offers a well-rounded introduction to the fundamentals of business analysis, including process modeling, communicating with stakeholders, analysis techniques, and more.
Marketing
Like sales skills, marketing skills have broad applications even outside their specific department. Understanding how to position your product or service within your market will help any member of your team understand what sets your organization apart and how they can best represent your brand in their own work.
Where to Start:
Essential New Skills in Marketing: This five-course learning path uses LinkedIn data to determine the newest in-demand marketing skills, including diversity and equity in marketing and social media marketing, and compiles the most relevant courses for teaching them.
Master Digital Marketing: This nine-course learning path takes an exhaustive deep dive into the world of digital marketing, starting with a course on foundations and moving through social media, SEO, all the way to emerging technologies.
Teamwork
In a business environment where more teams are working remotely than in-person, organizations need to proactively ensure their employees are working well together. Building teamwork skills like these in your organization will help improve cooperation and communication, as well as help create a healthy workplace culture.
Where to Start:
Improve Your Teamwork Skills: This eight-course learning path approaches teamwork as a set of collaboration and cooperation skills that can be actively practiced, offering primers on remote work experiences, conflict management, cross-functional teamwork, and more.
Building Trust and Collaborating with Others: This seven-course learning path examines how to use teamwork and communication skills to practically build inter-team and organizational trust to improve true collaboration and team cohesion.
Get the resources you need for any professional development topic
Believe it or not, these ten professional development topics and the twenty learning paths covering them only scratch the surface of what your team can learn with LinkedIn Learning.
No matter the topics you’d like to prioritize developing within your organization, LinkedIn Learning has all the expert-guided resources you’ll need. Sign up for LinkedIn Learning today for more information, and start choosing the right learning paths for your teams.