Employees in any business are involved in an endless stream of communication, exchanging ideas, news, both within the team and communicating with clients. Sometimes this flow becomes too “stormy” and results in stress increases, decision-making, and team conflicts become more frequent. The empathy of managers and their skills of constructive feedback are one of the most important conditions for building an effective team., contribute to the development of initiative among employees, stimulate them to non-standard and innovative approaches, which, as a result, leads to an improvement in the quality and productivity of activities.

 

What are soft skills, how they differ from hard skills

 

Hard skills: These are narrow professional skills that include language skills, the ability to program, build charts, work with analytical data, and design buildings.

 

Soft skills: These personal skills are manifested in relationships with oneself and others. They are useful for people of any profession, and they with soft skills training can be used both in work and in personal life. This concept includes a whole complex of human qualities, which is endless:

• stress resistance;
• self-motivation;
• good learning ability;
• organization;
• ability to listen;
• the ability to understand and manage your own and other people’s emotions;
• ability to think creatively, strategically and logically;
• ability to work in a team, resolve conflicts;
• the ability to quickly adapt to changes.

 

There are enough studies available to prove that corporate soft skills training is critical for employees and managers as they need to manage a team, negotiate, and speak in public. However, it is needed by everyone, including ordinary specialists: any person will need to communicate, think critically, and recognize emotions.

 

Why are soft skills needed, and what is their value?

Nowadays, many organizations do not guarantee that a person will maintain existing employment for a long time. The same applies to the company as a whole. Forms of work, employment, demand, technologies and products are changing, professions appear and disappear.

 

The need to develop soft skills and adaptively transform was demonstrated to the whole world by the 2020 pandemic. Employees and executives needed to move companies to remote work unexpectedly, quickly and efficiently. But, at the same time, do not lose productivity and competitiveness. Or even find a way to survive in general under conditions of a ban on this or that activity. Solving these problems was almost entirely determined by the development of flexible competencies among employees and managers by corporate soft skills training.

 

Who needs to develop Soft Skills?

Of course, the answer is everyone. However, it is recommended to pay special attention to the development of Soft Skills for those who, for several reasons, are less competitive in the labour market:

• People with no work experience (recent graduates and job reversals).
• Specialists over 50 years old focused on Hard Skills in their professional growth, and soft skills often “sink”.
• For novice leaders.
• Planning relocation or emigration.
• Representatives of professions, the demand for which is falling.

 

What are the most important Soft Skills and why?

Today, experts have different views about which soft competencies are considered the most valuable for an organization. But according to employer surveys, the following are often found in the list of highly demanded soft skills training:

• Ability to adapt, change, act in conditions of partial uncertainty.
• Ability to communicate effectively in different formats and at different levels.
• Self-organization.
• Analytic skills.
• Teamwork skill.

In terms of personal effectiveness, the importance of learning, regulating, making decisions, and making connections cannot be overemphasized.

 

How do Soft Skills affect the office?

 

• Working in a large organization sometimes allows employees to rely only on Hard Skills. Large MNCs can have a ramified structure and rigid division of functions, supplementing narrow professionals in a large team with specialists with soft skills.
• Small businesses are impossible to grow without a high level of Soft Skills proficiency. Soft competencies in modern conditions determine competitiveness in the labour market and move up the career ladder.
• Even a well-qualified employee with super-professional in the field of Hard Skills without soft skills will remain an ordinary performer with an impenetrable salary. Also, there will be a high level of risk of being stuck with employment problems in the event of a job loss. 

 

Effective development of soft skills among employees 

 

Here, we will discuss how to avoid the top five most common mistakes while creating a corporate soft skills training development course. What is the competent development of soft skills among employees, and how to avoid mistakes in drawing up a program?

 

Mistake # 1. Small coverage.

One of the biggest demerits of offline courses is that it requires employees to take a break from work.  As a result, face-to-face training becomes available only to the management team. As for employees of mass functions – offline courses cannot teach them, for example, emotional intelligence, systemic, critical, and creative thinking, speed reading, or mnemonics?

How to solve it: Give preference to online courses.

 

Mistake # 2. Focus on theory.

A sudden large amount of information does not generate interest among employees. It becomes hard for them to understand how they can integrate the information they have received into their work. In the process of training, the employee skims through the information and does not receive useful knowledge that will affect his effectiveness.

What to do? Draw employees’ attention to case studies.

 

Mistake number 3. Lack of practice.

Most of the time, employees take knowledge tests instead of skill tests. The theory will only help a person pass the test for the course but will not affect its effectiveness.

What to do? Pay attention to soft skills training that form skills and do not provide unnecessary theory.

 

Mistake # 4. Skills are not translated into skills.

If the company does not have conditions for applying the acquired knowledge in practice, the courses will not affect the company’s efficiency in any way.

What to do? Create personalised courses that can help an employee to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.

 

Mistake # 5. As part of the course, employees are not given attention-enhancing exercises.

Meanwhile, as much as 90% of information is not assimilated since employees have low concentration and switch and distribute attention.

 

We at Centum developed a course on soft skills training for those looking to move quickly up the career ladder and learn how to lead more effectively. Each block of the course ends with an analysis of real cases, management battles or discussions in which it is convenient to hone communication skills.

 

For each participant in the program, a personal development track is formed, which takes into account precisely his goals. The employee sequentially goes through multiple blocks of the course, which systematically affect all the flexible skills required by the leader. This is followed by a face-to-face interview that helps assess progress.