How BlaBlaCar uses soft skills in performance and career development

How important are employees’ soft skills in managing their performance and the development of their career?

Over the years, I developed the belief that soft skills were essential to these aspects of talent management. At BlaBlaCar, we took the time in 2020 to understand and leverage the interplay between soft skills, performance and development and what we learned from it led us to introduce a Soft Skills Framework.

First, let’s take a step back and clearly define the concepts at hand, how this process has evolved at BlaBlaCar over the years, and what’s next on this passionate journey for talent development.

Soft skills — what do we mean by that?

Soft skills have many different interpretations, most of the time with an inaccurate vision of what they actually refer to. It is commonly agreed that they are human, personal and transversal behavioral competencies. They should not be confused with personality traits or emotions. When we speak of soft skills, we talk about notions that can be acquired, developed and used according to the situation or needs. They are complementary to so-called “hard” or technical skills, which are directly related to a specific expertise and are easily identifiable and measurable.

The last report of the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs” is listing 10 key soft skills that will be needed. Amongst them, we can mention Analytical thinking, Creativity, Complex problem-solving, Leadership, Emotional intelligence.

Recently, these skills have become increasingly important (even if not new at all) for many reasons, including:

• Programmed obsolescence of technical skills: recent studies mention that a technical skill would have a lifespan of 12 to 18 months, while, conversely, soft skills are, by their very nature, non-perishable;
• A great unknown on the evolution of current jobs and new jobs of the future that we do not yet know: a 2017 Dell Study stated that 85% of the jobs of 2030 would not yet exist, which accumulated with a strong evolution of work forms, implies the urge for developing skills that will allow to adapt to such changes, and to prepare for continuous learning and training;
• The automation and anticipated cohabitation of man and machine reinforce the need for soft skills, which are the prerogative of the human being, the skills that robots can’t automate, that are critical to keep the appropriate step back vs the machine

If you are at a very small scale or once you’re fully set up and/or the organization is not facing important changes, then you might be able to make it work being focused on hard skills. At a company like BlaBlaCar, whose organization is rapidly evolving and scaling, the ability to collaborate smoothly and adjust to a fast-changing context is becoming more and more important.

There is indeed now quite a strong consensus around the benefits of reinforcing soft skills, for instance:

• Better integration of new recruits
• A reinforcement of collaborative and teamwork capacities
• An improvement in employee commitment and productivity
• Added value in the management of complex situations

As of yet, there is a lack of data to support and measure these impacts, but it is safe to say that with the rising importance of soft skills in the workplace, such studies will no doubt emerge in the near future.

How have we defined the BlablaCar Soft Skills?

The framework for soft skills at BlaBlaCar was designed through an iterative approach involving employees and managers, across workshops and feedback processes. A final set of 5 skills was determined by mixing standard performance and development skills adapted to BlaBlaCar culture and business challenges:

Expertise: Ability to develop a vast and substantial expertise in his / her field, to act as an agent of change in their domain, to develop cross-disciplinary knowledge in their skills

Business Prioritization: Ability to take a step back, to prioritize and focus on added-value tasks only, and to take the right decisions /arbitrations according to the scope / team / company’s priorities and goals

Agility: Ability to step out of one’s comfort zone in order to address new challenges with innovative solutions, experiment and learn from experiences with a positive and open mind, embrace change to always strive for excellence

Teamwork: Ability to work constructively and collaboratively with others through strong communication & ability to connect, support and share information and knowledge with others fostering cross-team collaborations and networking

Leadership: Ability to bring a vision, positively influence others and make things happen with assertiveness & impact, inspire others through exemplary actions, integrity and commitment.

These skills embody the key characteristics that will support our people all throughout their journey at BlaBlaCar. They reflect the key assets needed not only to achieve their goals but also to grow in their career given the culture we have, the way we work and operate as a group, and the type of business challenges we face.

How did we integrate our Soft Skills Framework in the review process ?

In early 2020, we decided to provide improvements to the different review processes.

We had 2 performance reviews per year focused on the achievement of goals, on the “what” has been accomplished. We also had a once a year career review expanding the discussion to a more global view on career perspectives and way to get there. These reviews were separated into 2 different discussions happening at different moments ; the discussion around the employee skills was not really formalized nor addressed.

We decided to provide 2 major improvements to these processes:

i/ We merged the 2 discussions into a unique moment. Indeed, there is a strong link and continuity between both aspects of the journey of a person. The level of performance, the skills that are used to achieve goals and operate in their job on the short / mid term are also assets for people to develop themselves, and grow in their career on a mid / long term.

ii/ We introduced the “How” to enlighten the “What”. The performance review initially focused a lot on the “what”, based on the OKR’s methodology, with a discussion strongly centered around the achievement of the goals by themselves. The “how” these goals were achieved or not, the skills that the person used to perform and grow, the difficulties that he / she faced were not discussed, nor formalized, hence not allowing to assess and define a clear development plan on the short and mid / long term.

Thus, we decided to build a framework around the set of 5 soft skills to support these discussions and emphasize on “how” the employee could better perform on the short-term but also grow in his / her practice and more globally at BlaBlaCar.

The framework offers a granular view of the specific and observable behaviors for each of the skills according to the seniority and the level of responsibility in the job.

This granular framework supports managers in a more personalized discussion with their team members. Knowing in advance the behaviors that are expected at the next step helps managers align with their reportee on the development priorities and formalize a concrete development plan.

It is also worth mentioning that reviews are not only based on a top down and managerial approach but on a larger set of evaluation based on employee self assessment and peer reviews to ensure a larger view of what is at stake in terms of strengths and improvements.

What are the results ?

We’ve got several qualitative feedback on the framework : it helps managers better structure and build the discussion around performance and growth ; people globally appreciate knowing what is expected of them and what they are evaluated on ; it allows to easily compare and have an open discussion when alignment is needed between an employee and a manager.

On a more quantitative aspect, we’ve observed a good data correlation between the evaluation of the soft skills and the mapping of people according to their performance and their growth stage.

Hence, we believe that the set of skills we’ve defined so far is the right one to support individual assessment and growth, while supporting business challenges.

What’s next ?

We will keep using feedback to improve both the framework and its usage, especially moving to more granularity based on job families to complete the common framework with more personalized skills supporting the type of job people are performing. We aim to target at some point a fully individualized and industrialized approach of these development actions based on soft skills.

To achieve great things in the future, human beings will need soft skills that go beyond technical competencies. They will give the ability to adjust fast, to unite, to generate fellowship. Ensuring we are able to support employees in developing these soft skills will help them, and the organisation as a whole, to grow together in a serene yet high performance environment.