Demand for Soft Skills Still Exceeds Supply by up to 45%

With the new soft-skills for business report by Deloitte Access Economics, it highlights that Australia is seeing a variety of factors — digital disruption, globalisation and demographic shifts — which are all shaping Australia’s skill needs.

The report is projecting that soft-skill occupations will account for two-thirds (63%) of all jobs in Australia by 2030. It also analyses the importance of obtaining and measuring soft skills to better understand areas that need to be improved in the Australian workforce and businesses.

What defines soft-skills? These can be referred to as employability, enterprise and transferable skills such as:

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Problem-solving
• Emotional Judgement
• Professional ethics
• Global Citizenship

Jobs requiring all of the above are projected to grow 2.5 times faster than other occupations where soft-skills are not as necessary over the period to 2030.

“As the lines between professions and industries get blurred, soft skills will become the new job currency. It is essential for businesses to invest in developing and measuring soft skills of their people in order to future-proof their operations. Contributing to overall staff productivity, employees with more soft skills could increase business revenue by over $90,0001 and enable our nation’s economy to thrive now and in the future,” says report author and Deloitte Access Economics partner John O’Mahony.

Attainment of soft skills in Australia

Australians currently have high soft-skill fulfilment gap in comparison to other countries, with new data sourced from LinkedIn. Australians are 3x more likely to list problem solving as a key skill on their LinkedIn profile than the global average.

Similarly, they are more than twice as likely to list digital literacy, innovation, and communication as the average, and almost twice as likely to include self-management and professional ethics. While the analysis highlights that soft skills are 9 times more likely to be endorsed compared to a technical skill on LinkedIn, less than 1% of Australians report having any soft skills on their LinkedIn profiles. This under-reporting is found to be consistent globally.

Australian businesses are already recognising the importance of soft-skills as they increasingly mention within job criterias. This is evident by the roles that are advertised with specific soft-skill requirements.

Based on a new analysis of over 175,000 resumes and more than 160,000 job listings across 33 industry sectors in Australia from online and mobile job site, Workible, communication, teamwork and digital skills emerge as the most commonly reported skills in Australia.

Despite being the most commonly listed soft skill, communication skills still remain in short supply with a significant difference (45%) between demand and reported supply.

Employers struggle to fill in entry-level and leadership roles due to shortage of soft skills While businesses in Australia spend a staggering $11 billion on employee training and staff recruitment annually, one-fourth of employers report having difficulty recruiting entry-level vacancies because applicants lack soft skills.

New data from Workible also points out a deficit in leadership skills, with one-third of roles asking for leadership qualities, but only 17% of job candidates state having leadership skills. Supporting this is another set of data from LinkedIn, which shows 69% of HR decision makers in Australia and New Zealand find it difficult to fill leadership roles, citing lack of soft skills (45%) amongst job applicants as the top reason.

For the full report — click here