When you think of lost arts you probably think of things like tatting (lace making), calligraphy, plastering and other fine arts. What might surprise you is that there are other skills that the next generation is not learning as well and many of these could impact your business and the way that you interact with both employees and customers.
Keep reading for some examples:
Cursive writing: Cursive is no longer regularly being taught in elementary school. It has been replaced by typing, or keyboarding as it is more commonly known these days. Many educators believe that being able to type quickly and with a high level of accuracy is much more important. Unfortunately, that has resulted in a group of upcoming employees and customers who can neither write nor read cursive. While it might seem cool at first that those of us pre-generation Y-ers have our own sort of secret code it can be frustrating when you realize that you have to decipher your notes because they can't read cursive. Additionally, many young people try to teach themselves cursive which results in illegible handwriting that no one else can read.
Memorization: Most older folks can still remember numbers that were important to them when they were young, their home phone number, their best friend's number, the address of a favorite place. Thanks to smartphones with their built directories we no longer have to store that information in our brains. Unfortunately, that means if the battery dies or we lose our phone we have no idea what number to dial to reach even our closest friends. If you were to lose your phone, even for a short while, would you have a written record of your important numbers? Would you know where to look to find them? What if someone becomes incapacitated while in your business? If their phone is locked would you have any way of knowing who to contact?
Good directions: Back in the day, you had to know how to get places. Now we have the benefit of GPS so our car or phone can tell us how to get where we're going. Many people have become so reliant on their devices that they have no idea how to even get to places that they frequent on a regular basis. This can cause problems when you're trying to arrange a delivery or have someone pick something up on their way to work.
Phone etiquette: Phone etiquette used to be a skill that was taught and then practiced. It was considered important to know how to place and answer calls in a courteous manner. Now e-mail and social media are much more prevalent in terms of preferred methods of communication and many people are lacking finesse when it comes to having a phone conservation. You certainly don't want your employees greeting callers with a casual "yeah" and answering questions with pithy little sound bites as if they're verbally tweeting.
Formal letter writing: This one is another victim of e-mail. Even those who learned this skill in school have likely forgotten many of the niceties. We're conditioned to keep it short and skip the frills that letter writing was known for so that our electronic messages are scroll-free. If the need arises to send more formal communication it can end up being poorly written because the writer is unused to the format.
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