It’s all very well asking for high-level skills from young workers like being growth oriented, being able to process data and solve problems. But not everyone has those – and indeed, not all managers need all those ‘skills’ - managers should be selecting the personal characteristics specific to each job for which they hire someone. But everyone loves a list so here's a more basic list that every manager does need from every young worker in all jobs done in a firm.

To many, management is about making quick decisions delivered forcefully. The epitome is the super-experienced alpha male barking orders. If this were valid, it would need the manager to have a huge repertoire of experience - of every possible situation. But this is just flawed. Managers should be more like researchers, investigating, unearthing, appraising and deciding.

Over the last year, you will have read many articles about GDPR. Many authors use scare tactics sell audit and other services to readers! Generally the reason why companies are panicking is because now, for the first time maybe, there’s legislation with teeth. Existing health & safety, privacy and employment law can substantially be ignored because unless a firm really transgresses, there’s little repercussion. Even quality management is optional! GDPR can’t be ignored.

Resilience has three elements: the ability to manage yourself and your learning, the ability to communicate and collaborate with others and the ability to successfully craft one’s own environment. As skills that are difficult to automate, those might be termed ‘skills for life’. No-one is going to make your firm resilient for you. It's your job as manager and the time to start is now.

There’s no doubt: ask any senior manager how he or she would evaluate training and the response will always be given in terms of how the business can now do something it previously couldn’t, or how productivity has been raised. It’s the effect on the business that matters. And yet so often, assessment about training success is made much earlier in the personal development process. Here's how to think about training to realise business outcomes.

It's not always easy to know whether someone is classed as an employee or as a contractor. Many managers would want it one way or the other but unfortunately it’s not up to management. Others such as HMRC or an Employment Tribunal will make the decision.