Soft skills also known as people skills are, in today’s working environment, an essential requirement. The technical skills/hard skills are important, but soft skills are what helps improve efficiency and effectiveness in the people.
The blend of social, communication and interpersonal skills, attitudes, social and emotional intelligence, career attributes and character traits, Soft skills are what make the person gel well with others and performs his duties efficiently.
Some of the skills that employers look for in their employee are:
- work ethic
- optimistic attitude
- time-management abilities
- emotional intelligence
- self-confidence
- goal setting
- ability to acquire/learn and admit criticism
- collaboration
What Soft Skills are Business Firms looking for?
Here are some skills that various organizations seek in the employees they hire and also what they mean:
- Ingenuity – qualities that characterize a proficient individual, professionalism
- Responsibility – reliable, resourceful, accountable, aspiring
- Commitment – self-discipline, understanding
- Team Player – supportive, accommodating, harmonious, collaborative
- Attitude – positivity, confidence, enthusiastic, optimistic
- Veracity – reliable, moral, honest, candor
- Politeness – etiquette, gallantry, courtesy, civil, considerate, respectful
- Work ethic – dependable, hardworking, determined, loyal, dedicated, motivated.
- Empathy – humility, humble, modest, devoted, patient
- Interpersonal skills – friendly, have self-control, warm, sociable, warm
- Communication skills – presentable, writing, speaking, and listening capability
- Receptive – open, flexible, teachable, willing
This has resulted in a change in priorities of the organizations. The soft skills development programs are gaining popularity along with leadership and executive coaching/ development programs.
This blend of various skills helps the employees to team up and efficiently collaborate on multiple platforms. This is as important as technical skills, i.e., soft skills are new hard skills nowadays.
Why are Soft Skills relevant?
Researchers from all over the world have done their best to understand the need and importance of skills. The conclusion of all research came to be that Soft Skills complements Hard skills. Getting along with others is as important as it is to have technical skills.
Soft skills are in a way obligatory for managers, leaders, employees, and supervisors who want to improve their as well as team’s performance and climb up in their career.
These skills assist leaders to distinguish between the performance of different employees giving them the opportunity to separate mediocre employees and work on their skills. Almost everywhere the most in-demand skill is Soft Skills.
So how do you sharpen your Soft skills
Developing the employee soft skills depend upon the need of the organization to reach its objectives or fulfil its goals. Every task requires a specific competency or behavior or ability, and every firm tries to help their employee to develop them as per their job requirement.
For example, a business trying to improve its customer care service will focus on developing the communication & listening skills, patience, and problem-solving skills.
There are multiple ways to do it, here’s one of the many ways –
- Setting a goal – Establish a specific purpose that is assessable.
- Employee Engagement – Upsurge the employee engagement from 55% to 80%.
- Identify the indicator – Ascertain a key indicator that can be used to gauge the progress towards the set goal.
- Develop target behavior – Concentrate on developing the intended behaviors.
- Build relationships – Develop relations with the employees.
- Desired Behavior – Study the skills that affect the desired Behavior such as communication skills, social & emotional intelligence, etc.
- Develop a strategy – Lay down a learning strategy for the development of the required soft skills.
Humans are visual beings – they learn by observing and interacting socially. Therefore, the best method to learn and acquire the soft skills is through microlearning or short videos.
The visual aid helps to grasp the information easily and quickly. The videos with real-life situations can present examples of what should one do or not do in a situation can help with the skill development. The lessons video should provide enough time for the employees to assess and think.
The online training programs to help but having face-to-face communication works much better. The organizations can go for a combination of the two like organizing engaging group sessions along with online training programs.
The firms can also organize conducive working activities and wellness programs to help develop the soft skills.
Soft Skills are harder to quantify such as etiquette, engaging with others, etc. but in today’s workplace, they are as crucial as any professional skill. The organization nowadays try to the employee or sought employees who already possess such qualities as they are important for working in a team and grow as a leader.