Modern organizations are having to reassess the way they define employee skills. In the past, the discussion centered around hard vs soft skills, but the evolving nature of work requires another layer of delineation. 

This new terminology gives more context to hard and soft skills, especially as it relates to what companies are looking for today. 

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the meaning of perishable and durable skills and development and share how to integrate these emerging concepts as part of your L&D strategy.

Understanding durable and perishable skills

Durable skills encompass traits or abilities that can work across all industries and jobs, including skills such as collaboration, adaptability, creativity, taking initiative, strategic communication, critical thinking and problem-solving. 

You may recognize these as soft skills — and you’re exactly right. By virtue, all soft skills are durable skills. The terminology shift to “durable skills” is not just semantics. It speaks to one of the strongest values of soft skills: their ability to stay relevant long term.

The topic or context may shift over time, but the need for durable skills is there regardless of industry changes or technological advancements. 

You can easily see how flexible durable skills are throughout an organization. For example, whether you’re an individual contributor or part of leadership, in IT or Customer Success, the need for durable skills like collaboration, communication and complex problem-solving stays consistent. 

How does a perishable skill differ from a durable skill?

While all soft skills are durable skills, not all hard skills are perishable skills. It’s a bit more nuanced than that. Hard skills usually refer to very specific, often technical skills such as software engineering, data analytics, specialized writing, methodologies like Six Sigma or software proficiency.

So are these hard skills perishable? In some ways yes; in others no. It depends on their lifecycle and the skill’s transferability within a broader skill set. 

Overarching hard skills, such as software engineering, require a general knowledge base. They’re not universal like traditional durable or soft skills that bring value to companies across the board, but they’re more consistent than perishable skills and have a longer life cycle. This is an example of a hard skill that’s semi-durable and can be of value across a large part of an individual’s career.

While these semi-durable skills bring a broad base of experience to any assignment, they require specific tools to complete. For instance, an employee might need a hard, perishable skill like knowledge of HTML for web design, AI for specialized writing or Tableau for analytics. 

The values of strong design, writing and statistics don’t change over the years, but the production tools do. In a world where technology advances daily, these specific tools can cycle in and out of use. The more quickly they do, the more perishable they are — leaving your employees with skills gaps and difficulty keeping up.


The challenges with perishable and durable skills

The problem isn’t the fact that perishable skills exist. Even with their often short life cycle, perishable skills are just as vital to company health and growth. Businesses rely on these types of skills to continuously evolve and innovate. All the soft skills in the world won’t matter if someone doesn’t have the actual hard skills to do the work. 

The problem is that those perishable skills quickly become obsolete and many organizations don’t have the proper employee learning and development strategy in place to keep up with the rate of change.

What role does learning and development play?

Skills gaps arise when there’s a mismatch between the education available and what employees actually need. This problem is widespread, with 87% of companies reporting skills gaps currently. 

When coupled with an ultra-competitive job market and a global shortage of skilled workers, there’s a growing need for companies to prioritize developing talent from within, rather than solely relying on hiring to fill job openings. That’s why the role of learning and development is so critical. Without the proper training and education opportunities, employees lack the tools needed to continuously update their skill sets, maintain productivity and advance into new jobs that need filling. 

Evolving L&D for durable and perishable skills

Organizations need to adopt a proactive approach to skills development — one that takes into account the nuances and timeline of durable, semi-durable and perishable skills so you can anticipate skill gaps before they hit. This builds a more agile workforce that’s continuously improving and is braced for change (instead of reactive to it). 

To make this a reality, take the time to develop a skills taxonomy so you can form a common language for skills within the organization. Additionally, conduct regular skills gap analyses to identify what the greatest skills needs are among your workforce.

Armed with this information, you’re equipped to build out an L&D strategy that’s comprehensive enough to keep pace with durable skills, perishable skills and everything in between.

More resources for L&D leaders: Need to take quick action on upskilling and reskilling? Download this guide for tips on how to fast-track skill-building for your workforce.

Discover the meaning of perishable and durable skills and how this new way of looking at skills can help enhance your learning and development strategy.

Why durable and perishable skills matter

HR leaders share how to create innovative engagement and retention strategies that allow employees to move and grow within an organization.

Fueling talent mobility with workforce education

Skills-based hiring is changing how organizations approach talent management. And rightly so.

One of the main benefits of skills-based hiring is that it expands candidate pools by creating new opportunities for people without traditional educational backgrounds. These workers, also referred to as STARs (Skilled Through Alternative Routes), have skills and experience, but lack a four-year degree. Opening doors for these individuals improves workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), reduces time-to-fill and increases the likelihood of making a successful hire.

This shift in talent management strategy also prompts the need for a career pathing makeover.

In implementing skills-based hiring, employers go through the process of carefully defining the skills needed to perform a role. This brings clarity to career progression by enabling all employees — degreed and STAR employees alike — to understand the skills required for advancement.

While this is a good start, defining the skills required for advancement is only the first step. Employees need to know how to gain these skills – they need a concrete path to career mobility. More than a third (39.5%) of U.S. workers state that one of the top reasons for leaving a company is lack of career advancement opportunities, and more than half of employers don’t offer advancement tracks.

So, what’s missing? Take your list of skills and identify education programs that will teach those skills, so that your employees know not only what skills they need for advancement, but also how to attain them.

Making the link between career pathing and skills-based hiring

If your organization is moving towards skills-based hiring, it’s critical to understand how this shift in hiring strategy influences career pathing. Opening the door to a wider talent pool is a great start, but you have to have career paths and education opportunities in place to ensure that these hires are set up for success.  

Here are the two essential phases for making this connection.

As an initial step, every company planning to implement skills-based hiring should establish a common language and framework for skills within the company. 

Aligning internally on a skills taxonomy to use across job families

Analyzing job descriptions and interviewing internal subject matter experts to establish the skills required for key positions, especially those you’re targeting for degree removal  

Establishing if there are specific skills employees at various levels of the organization should possess across job families. For example, you may want all employees at the director level to have coaching skills, regardless of whether they work on the marketing or finance team.

As mentioned, however, simply telling employees what skills they need is not enough.

Phase 2: Identify education programs that help develop the skills

Education is the connecting link that allows employees to gain these skills and move from one milestone to the next. When you have education programs that teach the skills required for career advancement, then you have created a career path.

It’s a win-win. Employees are empowered to take charge of their own careers and seek out internal positions that align with their skills and interests. At the same time, companies build a talent pipeline from within to address key staffing needs, promote higher employee engagement and enhance their employer brand by showcasing their investment in continuous development to job-seekers. 

See it in action: Medtronic & InStride

InStride recently partnered with Medtronic to remove degree requirements for more than 60 roles across 15 job families, including operations and supply chain and IT roles. Together, the companies designed career paths to provide employees with a glimpse into a day-in-the-life of roles within targeted job families, an overview of the skills required to perform them and educational programs they could access through InStride for free to develop the required skills.

Leaders are looking for talent management solutions that connect companies and their employees’ career goals so they can innovate, adapt and succeed as one. Integrating skills-based hiring, career pathing and education is a proven, effective solution. 

Hiring candidates based on skills and providing them with tangible career paths supported by relevant education opportunities builds an adaptable workforce that’s primed for growth. This approach supports talent mobility, reduces turnover and boosts employer brand, while ensuring that the right people are in the right roles to propel your company forward.

Learn more about InStride's solutions that enable skills-based hiring and custom career pathing that meet the needs of both your business and employees. Get in touch today.

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