Soft skills: What are they and why are they so important?
Professional development has become a major priority for employees in the post-pandemic landscape. A 2020 LinkedIn report found that 94% of workers would consider staying with a company for longer if it invested in their learning and development. Simply put, companies can’t afford to neglect L&D if they want to avoid costly staff losses. Furthermore, high staff turnover can have a significant impact on profit generation, with reports indicating that good staff retention rates can improve company profits by up to 300%.
While development opportunities are now at the forefront of many L&D strategies, there is still a tendency to disregard soft skill training in the corporate workspace. Technical skills, although essential to role progression and competency, are rarely enough to galvanise the best results — especially in customer-facing or team-based positions. A blend of technical and soft skills is required for optimal employee performance, and while many soft skills are linked with character traits, they can still be shared through effective training. Soft skills have a crucial role to play in establishing inspirational leadership, efficient operational processes, and a wellbeing-oriented company culture, and should form a core component of any professional development programme.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills, sometimes called common or core skills, are abilities that can be applied to all professions. They can broadly be summarised as interpersonal attributes that enable efficient communication, creative planning, and collaboration amongst teams. The term was coined by the US army in the 1960s to denote any skill that didn’t involve the use of machinery or military hardware (hard skills). In the corporate world, the term hard skills refers to technical skills specific to a profession or role.
Essentially, soft skills are the ‘human’ traits that ensure technical/hard skills are carried out as efficiently and effectively as possible. They can (and should) be deployed at every level of an organisation to engender a cohesive, positive, and communicative work force.
Key soft skills include:
Time management
Critical thinking
Inspirational leadership
Teamwork
Adaptability
Willingness to learn
Problem solving
Receptiveness
Approachability
Conflict management
Persuasiveness
Empathy
Creativity
Stress management
Combined, these skills oil the wheels of industry and are arguably more conducive to success than hard skills. As cited in a Future of Sourcing article, Stanford Research Institute International found that up to 75% of an employee’s success comes from soft skills, while only 25% of success comes from technical skills. Similarly, in a 2019 LinkedIn survey 92% of talent professionals said soft skills mattered at least as much as technical skills, with 80% agreeing that soft skills are increasingly important to company success.
With more and more employers seeking soft skills in new hires, it’s only natural that candidates in turn seek workplaces that celebrate and nurture the same skills. Without a dedicated L&D programme with the appropriate training and course champions, organisations are at risk of losing candidates and existing staff to companies where soft skills and professional development go hand in hand.
Soft skills training
But just how do you make soft skills training an integral part of work? Learning in the workplace is more than simply participating in a series of training events (classroom or online) or engaging in self-study. Instead, learning in the workplace is continuous and occurs in several ways. Jane Hart, the Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, suggests there are four pathways to learning at work:
1) DIDACTICS (Formal Learning) — being taught or trained.
2) DOING their job (Experiential Learning) — from their everyday work experiences.
3) DISCOURSE (Social Learning) — interacting with others, whether it be in their professional social networks (i.e., Twitter or LinkedIn) or with their work colleagues.
4) DISCOVERY (Informal Learning) — finding things out themselves through searching or browsing the web.
While some soft skills can be communicated through formal learning management system (LMS) courses, most require a more human approach. That’s because many soft skills are less methodical in nature than technical skills which are typically limited to a small number of approaches and interpretations.
This is why organisations are increasingly looking at learning experience platforms (LXPs) to make learning relevant and enjoyable through personalisation, powerful search and AI functionality, and integrations with the wider learning ecosystem. Designed for bespoke, user-led learning, a learning experience platform is ideal for managing and delivering soft skills training at scale.
Unlike an LMS, an LXP puts the learner experience at the heart of learning, empowering users to curate, share, and enhance content and workshops in a social virtual environment. Less restrictive than traditional educational courses, LXP courses can consist of virtually any content chosen by the course curator. From YouTube videos and webinar recordings to blog articles and PowerPoint presentations, LXP courses can be constructed by individuals or teams and are endlessly adaptable. Furthermore, LXP software features forums to facilitate and encourage discussions, feedback, and recommendations — making the learning journey an organic and constantly evolving one.
As soft skills are closely linked with character traits, they’re best communicated by subject matter experts (SMEs) — champions with the exemplary skillset required to inspire and educate others. With relevant experience and demonstrable leadership skills, internal SMEs can be elected to lead LXP courses and devise schedules and activities. They can also track skill development amongst peers, as well as share the approaches and techniques of other SMEs with their cohorts.
Not only does an LXP eliminate the need for costly external soft skills training, but it empowers employees to determine the direction and nature of their professional development. An employee driven soft skills programme highlights an organisation’s available internal talent as well as an active learning in the flow of work L&D strategy — both of which are highly attractive prospects to candidates. And of course, the positive impact soft skills training has on organisational effectiveness and profit generation speaks for itself.
An LXP offers all the features and benefits to boost soft skills development, whilst driving a continuous learning culture. The LXP can replace an obsolete LMS within your organisation, giving you the ability to develop, curate, administer, and measure traditional e-learning, as well as the means to personalise and deliver the right training content at the right times to the right individuals.
But you don’t necessarily need to replace your existing LMS — your LXP can complement a robust LMS by expanding and enhancing the learner’s e-learning experience, becoming the place where learners can meet and share knowledge with one another.
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