What type of workplace processes would be helpful when using critical thinking in a work environment

There are many skills that are considered essential by employers. Critical thinking is one of the many skills that companies encourage within the workplace, as evidence has shown that it can make people better at their jobs and improve company performance.

But, what is it, why is it beneficial for businesses and how can it be improved within the workplace?

What Is Critical Thinking?

Put simply, critical thinking is the ability to look at a situation or problem in a way which is impersonal and unbiased.

It removes personal opinions and emotions, meaning that you are able to consider all of the options with neutrality. By considering a situation without the filter of traditions or personal bias, you are able to truly look at the information you are given and form a logical response.

Often, people will get bogged down in tradition, doing things the same way over and over again simply because it is the way things have always been.

This can lead to mistakes and errors, as well as large amounts of wasted time. By being able to think critically, you are able to consider all of the relevant data and make a logical decision that is based on facts, rather than traditions.

Critical thinking is considered to be a soft skill in terms of employee abilities.

This means that, for most people, the ability to think critically is something inherent to their personality.

This does not mean, however, that individuals who are not natural critical thinkers are unable to develop the skill. There are ways to improve your abilities and develop skills even if you aren’t naturally a critical thinker.

Key Features of Critical Thinking

• Asking questions
• Defining a problem
• Analyzing evidence
• Examining assumptions and bias
• Avoiding emotional responses
• Avoiding oversimplifying a situation
• Considering alternative interpretations
• The ability to tolerate ambiguity
• An awareness of your own thinking processes

How to Display Critical Thinking on Your Resume

Many employers consider critical thinking to be an essential skill.

So you may want to show that you have these skills when applying for a new role or position. Listing critical thinking skills within your resume can highlight your strengths to employers.

Some of the skills you should consider adding to your resume to highlight critical thinking include:

• Analysis skills
• Research skills
• Effective communication
• Teamwork
• Collaboration
• Flexibility
• Objectivity
• Observation
• Attention to detail
• Decision making
• Compliance
• Diagnostics
• Project management

Why Is Critical Thinking Important in the Workplace?

For employers, critical thinking has a multitude of benefits. Not only can it help their business to run smoothly, but it also helps to foster a sense of independence and self-reflection within employees.

Critical thinkers have been shown to make good decisions more frequently than those who don’t possess this skill, understanding how to relate best with their co-workers, when to communicate information with senior staff members and knowing how best to complete tasks.

Benefits of Critical Thinking

Happier Staff Members

One of the main things that critical thinking allows is an increased sense of independence and autonomy.

Staff members are encouraged to make their own decisions and form conclusions based on their own research. This will, in turn, help employees to feel happy, valued and appreciated, as they will know that their thoughts and abilities are important.

Time Saving

By allowing employees to consider tasks and problems themselves before coming to a decision, it will actually save a company time.

Rather than have in-depth meetings with multiple team members to discuss strategies and solutions, decisions can be made quickly and decisively. This means that less time is spent in meetings and more time can be spent completing tasks.

Effective Communication Between Teams and Departments

Rather than having multiple phone calls, emails and meetings to discuss a point before finally making a decision, employees with critical thinking skills can look at all of the information they are presented with before forming a decision or a selection of choices.

They can then present this information to the relevant person rather than discussing it with an entire department or a number of co-workers.

This means that communication may occur less frequently, but, when it does, the information shared will be complete and valuable.

Encourages a Variety of Approaches

By considering all of the available information in a neutral way, employees are able to form a variety of possible solutions to a problem.

This means that responses are well thought-out and, therefore, likely to be more effective than decisions that are made on a snap-judgement or gut instinct.

Workplace Conflict Resolution

No matter how good a team is or how well a company is run, conflicts will happen within a workplace.

But, when they happen it is important to look at the situation from a neutral viewpoint. By considering the events or situation without any conscious or unconscious bias, it is possible to quickly resolve conflicts in a way that satisfies those involved.

<p>at, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, da</p> Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet

adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque da

pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet.

ongue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor s

icitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, d

Step-by-step explanation

ng elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a mol

Critical thinking is the ability to make informed decisions by evaluating several different sources of information objectively. As such, critical thinkers possess many other essential skills, including analysis, creativity, problem-solving and empathy.

Employers have always found critical thinking extremely valuable – after all, no boss wants to constantly handhold their employees because they are unable to make their own judgements about how best to proceed.

However, all too often people talk about critical thinking in theory, while never really explaining what that knowledge looks like in practice. As a result, many have never really understood the importance of thinking critically in business. Which is why we’ve created this list of examples of how critical thinking skills are used in the workplace.

Critical thinking example 1: Problem-solving

Imagine you’re at work. Someone, potentially your manager, presents you with a problem. You immediately go off and start looking for solutions. But do you take a step back first to analyse the situation, gathering and reviewing as much information as possible? Do you ask each of the different people involved what their opinion is, or how the problem affects their and the broader business’ day-to-day? And do you decide to run with the first solution you find, or take the time to come up with a number of different options and test each before making your final judgement?

While a lot of people may think they have problem-solving skills, if you aren’t taking the time to follow the above steps, you’re not really being a critical thinker. As such, you may not find the best solution to your problem.

Employing critical thinking skills when solving a problem is absolutely essential – what you decide could impact hundreds of people and even have an effect on the financial health of the business. If you’re not looking at it from multiple perspectives, you’re never going to be able to understand the full impact of a decision.

Economic uncertainty, climate change, political upheaval … risks abound in the modern workforce, and it’s an employee’s critical thinking skills that will enable a business to assess these hazards and act on them.

Risk assessment occurs in a number of different scenarios. For example, a construction company has to identify all potential hazards on a building site to ensure its employees are working as safely as possible. Without this analysis, there could be injuries or even deaths, causing severe distress to the workforce and negatively impacting the company’s reputation (not to mention any of the legal consequences).

In the finance industry, organisations have to assess the potential impacts of new legislation on the way they work, as well as how the new law will affect their clients. This requires critical thinking skills such as analysis, creativity (imagining different scenarios arising from the legislation) and problem-solving (finding a way to work with the new legislation). If the financial institution in this example doesn’t utilise these critical thinking skills, it could end up losing profit or even suffering legal consequences from non-compliance.

In the digital age critical thinking has become even more, well, critical. While machines have the ability to collate huge amounts of information and reproduce it in a readable format, the ability to analyse and act on this data is still a skill only humans possess.

Take an accountant. Many of their more mundane tasks have passed to technology. Accounting platforms have the ability to produce profit and loss statements, prepare accounts, issue invoices and create balance sheets. But that doesn’t mean accountants are out of a job. Instead, they can now focus their efforts on adding real value to their clients by interpreting the data this technology has collated and using it to give recommendations on how to improve. On a wider scale, they can look at historic financial trends and use this data to forecast potential risks or stumbling blocks moving forward.

The core skill in all of these activities is critical thinking – being able to analyse a large amount of information and draw conclusions in order to make better decisions for the future. Without these critical thinkers, an organisation may easily fall behind its competitors, who are able to respond to risks more easily and provide more value to clients.

One of the most important aspects of the critical thinking process is being able to look at a situation objectively. This also happens to be crucial when making a new hire. Not only do you have to analyse a large number of CVs and cover letters in order to select the best candidates from a pool, you also need to be able to do this objectively. This means not giving preferential treatment to someone because of their age, gender, origin or any other factor. Given that bias is often unconscious, if you can demonstrate that you are able to make decisions like this with as little subjectivity as possible, you can show that you possess objectivity – a key critical thinking skill.

Hiring the right talent is essential for a company’s survival. You don’t want to lose out on top candidates because of someone’s unconscious bias, showing just how essential this type of knowledge is in business.

Prove your critical thinking skills with professional practice credentials

As you can see, critical thinking skills are incredibly important to organisations across all industries. In today’s constantly changing world, businesses need people who can adapt and apply their thinking to new situations. No matter where you’re at in your career, you need critical thinking skills to complete your everyday tasks effectively, and when it comes to getting your next promotion, they’re vital.

But the problem with critical thinking skills, just like all soft skills, is that they are hard to prove. While you can show your employer you have a certificate in computer programming, you can’t say the same of critical thinking.

Until now. Enter Deakin’s professional practice credentials. These are university-level micro-credentials that provide an authoritative assessment of your proficiencies in a range of areas. This includes critical thinking, as well as a number of other soft skills, such as communication, innovation, teamwork and self-management.

Find out more about our credentials here or contact a member of the team today to find out how you can prove your critical thinking skills and take your career to the next level.