For many years, it has seemed companies have mainly focused on providing more technical skills training to employees.
This is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make; in fact, ensuring that all staff members receive access to soft skills training is vital in HR planning. All employees can improve their performance, interact better inside and outside the organization, and develop skills for promotion and succession planning.
Not only will soft skills training help when it comes to employee productivity, but it will also improve motivation and create a more harmonized, cooperative working environment. Knowing how to get along with people – and displaying a positive attitude – are crucial for success. The problem is, the importance of these soft skills is often undervalued, and there is far less training provided for them than hard skills.
Which soft skills are important?
Soft skills are essentially people skills, methods and strategies that we can use to have better, more positive interactions with those around us. However, they can also teach us about our approaches to how we work.
Some of the most valuable skills training to offer in your workplace include:
Communication Skills
Leadership Skills
Time Management
Team-Working
Problem-Solving
Change Management
If you have employees embarking on administrative or management careers, why not offer them a more modern, competency-focused form of administrative courses that cover a wide range of soft skills?
Here are some suggested training initiatives for employees:
- Assimilating into a new workplace culture
- Working with team members
- Processing feedback
- Communication skills such as public speaking
- Developing transferable long-term career goals, such as problem-solving, communication, negotiation and leadership
While the tug of war between the importance of soft skills versus hard skills in the workplace can go in either direction, both skill sets are essential to thrive in today’s business world. Emotional intelligence is just as important as IQ and learning and development teams need to ensure that training initiatives focus on developing soft skill sets.
If you are interested in learning how we can bring this type of training to your school or organization, click here for more information about our S3 Workforce Readiness Training.