Organizations require any employee to be competent and qualified to perform job tasks. Unfortunately, there is less guidance on how to define especially soft skills and on how to become an employer with a competitive position attracting and retaining young talents and experienced professionals.

We are all aware about the situation on the labor market and the lack of young talents. International organizations with multi-cultural teams have to cope with a further challenge: how can work standards for multi-cultural teams be defined and if done so, how can they be applied for projects in other countries with different work cultures?

It will be impossible to set up general standard regulations because the key answer to these questions is closely related to the individual mission statement of each organization. Therefore, the first step consists in analyzing each individual statement and comparing it to the needs, qualifications and values of existing staff and potential candidates as well as to the market and client demands. It is important to keep in mind that this process is reciprocal: especially young people – Generation Y and Z – know about their value and expect being offered rather than offering.

Based on this analysis a value / target scorecard of your organization as well as a job scorecard of each position describing required professional skills as well as soft skills can be drafted. Applied in practice these scorecards could be used as standard procedures to measure professional and soft skills for recruitment and bonus payment purposes. They are adaptable to different cultures and generations. Furthermore, if discussed and revised with organization employees they are effective motivation and retainment tools.

Starting this journey to work 4.0 your organization will transform to a real agile learning organization retaining and attracting young talents and professionals.