We often read news stories about how employers feel that applicants who’ve left school, college or university lack the ‘soft skills’ they want. Every employer looks for a specific set of skills from job-seekers that match the skills necessary to perform a particular job. But beyond these job-specific technical skills, certain skills are nearly universally sought by employers. The good news is that most employees possess these skills to some degree. The better news is that people with weaknesses in these areas can improve their skills through training, professional development, or obtaining coaching/mentoring from someone who understands these skills.

We will take a look at some of the most common soft skills, and why they are important to employers.

The phrase ‘soft skills’ is often used to describe the skills which characterise relationships with other people, or which are about how people approach life and work. Others phrases that are often used for these types of skills include: ‘people skills’, ‘interpersonal skills’, ‘social skills’ or ‘transferable skills’. We would call them people skills as they come down to how people interact with each other, from a verbal and/or non-verbal perspective and being non-technical in nature.

The importance of soft skills is often undervalued, and there is far less training provided for them than hard skills. For some reason, employers seem to expect people to know how to behave on the job. Assuming that such skills are universal and that everyone knows and understands the importance of being on time, taking initiative, being friendly, and producing high quality work are dangerous assumptions for employers to make and regularly leads to frustration. This is why it’s as important to focus as much on soft skills training and development as on technical/hard skills. Soft skills are not fluffy extras but what distinguishes good employers/managers from the also-rans.

If your workforce has lots of technical skills but an absence of soft skills, you have a soft skills gap. Soft skills complement the hard skills, and help your business to use its technical expertise to full advantage. The gap might be evidenced by:

  • If you’re really good at getting customers/clients, yet not so good at retaining them.
  • If you have high staff turnover and have to keep re-training people.
  • Employing Managers but none are real leaders.

In fact, whenever you are unable to capitalise on the wealth of knowledge, experience and proficiency within your team, then you should be assessing the level of communication and interpersonal skills that are present in your organisation. The acts of listening, presenting ideas, resolving conflict, and fostering an open and honest work environment all come down to knowing how to build and maintain relationships with people. It is important for you to recognize the vital role soft skills play within your team and not only work on developing them within yourself, but encourage their development throughout the organisation.

Many of the soft skills we need at work are a function of communication. These would include:

  • Giving and receiving feedback
  • Listening and questioning
  • Influencing and persuasion
  • Handling conflict
  • Presentation
  • Behaving assertively

Being likeable and trusted or a good leader are rightly seen as virtues but more often than not, these attributes come in the form of effective, accurate and persuasive communication.

Allied skills relating to others include:

  • Being empathetic
  • The ability to trust others
  • Being patient
  • Being respectful
  • Negotiating for results
  • Motivating others

We should however point out that not all qualities amount to soft skills. Being reliable, honest, industrious and adaptable are not soft skills. They are very important attitudes and competences but they are not skills.

Soft skills can be distinguished from competencies which have some substantial element of personality or technical skills. The most commonly used competencies are team-working, decision making, creativity & innovation, resilience & tenacity, time management and achievement orientation. Some of these competencies can be taught but not so readily.

Problem solving, delegating, motivating, and team building are all much easier if you have good soft skills. Knowing how to get along with people and others such skills are crucial for success.

Soft skills are at the very heart of professional and organisational success. However, many organisations struggle to deliver effective soft skills training because for many employers technical skills can be taught more easily than soft skills and success is more easily measured.

The good news is that, like any skill, soft skills can be learned. Training your staff in them will not only improve the employee’s skills at work but also have obvious applications in all areas of that person’s life, both professional and personal. There are a wide range of training options, including in-person and online courses, conferences and workshops. Launching a targeted mentoring program in which professionals with well-developed interpersonal abilities are paired with promising staff members can be a particularly effective strategy.
To paraphrase a CIPD report ‘Soft skills are best learned with a small amount of highly focused and relevant formal input, a large amount of real-world experience, practice inside and outside of one’s comfort zone, and timely, relevant and constructive feedback from other people’.

We know that strong people skills have the potential to deliver real commercial impact. Soft skills count – they are vital to the success not only of individuals (personally and professionally) and organisations. Training and development in this area offers a number of benefits for both employees and the organisation such as:

  • Higher productivity
  • Less conflict or at least conflict properly resolved
  • Reduced cost due to labour turnover, errors accidents & absence
  • Improved flexibility and adaptability
  • Better employee relations, morale, loyalty and trust

We know that training is not the answer to all business issues nor to all problem people but if you think training is expensive, then ignorance is far more costly.

Please feel free to discuss what BackupHR can offer in the way of soft skills training, to individuals or groups in your organisation.