When we think about training in the workplace, soft skills can often be overlooked because they’re not as tangible as ‘hard skills’ like coding or advanced Excel skills. But developing soft skill training for employees is just as important as technical skills.
One study by MIT Sloan found that a controlled, 12-month soft skills training trial in five different factories yielded a 250% ROI in just eight months. Their training in soft skills like problem solving and decision making increased productivity, made complex tasks more efficient, and improved employee attendance.
Stanford Research Institute International determined that 75% of the long-term success in a given job role is based on a mastery of soft skills, and only 25% of that job success comes from technical skills. As you can see, the results from soft skills training are impressive. So let’s take a closer look at how it all works.
What Are Soft Skills?
Soft skills tend to be more personality-focused, as opposed to being based on qualifications, technical skills, or vocational experience. That includes things like people skills, social skills, interpersonal skills, and transferable skills.
In contrast, hard skills are technical skills that are often job specific. They come from certification programs, employee training, and work experience and can be taught, measured, and tested through exams and practical assignments or quizzes.
Hard skills tend to relate to the core business of an organization, such as writing skills, computer networking skills, machine operation, business analysis, design, and construction. Soft skills deal more with interpersonal relationships and involve things like conflict resolution, communication, listening, and problem-solving.
How Soft Skills Training Can Benefit Any Business?
Competencies like communication, conflict resolution, and problem solving underpin almost every facet of business operations. Across your organization, in every business unit and employee role, soft skills are crucial for gaining new clients, improving customer service metrics, and building a stronger team dynamic.
There are many other organizational benefits to be gained from soft skills programs, and here are our top three:
- Improve Customer Service
This could be considered the most obvious benefit of improving soft skills in the workplace. Your employees will be able to actively listen more effectively to establish your customers’ needs, identify problems, and help them resolve it. They are also likely to have more compassion and empathy after enhancement of soft skills, which can have a large positive impact on customer service.
- Increase Sales
Improving soft skills can benefit your sales team during the sales negotiation process. Employees can use their competencies to engage with the client on a more personal level, without breaching the all-important professional boundaries, and your customers will definitely appreciate this. When employees take additional time to discuss the pain points that your clients experience and match them with the right solution, the sale will result by itself.
- Improve Employee Retention
Your organization will retain more talent because you’ve invested in their professional growth, and this pays off. You will reduce the need to hire and train replacement staff, thus reducing organizational costs.
Additionally, soft skills improve knowledge retention and equip employees to take ownership of their personal development.
Soft Skills That Will Improve Your Employees’ Performance
- Leadership
Leadership is a soft skill that enables people to guide others while fulfilling the goals and mission of the organization.
By upskilling leadership, employees will be better able to delegate, provide, and accept honest and actionable feedback, take responsibility for the deliverables they own, and motivate themselves and others to reach business targets and KPIs.
- Communication
Communication skills can be oral or written and facilitate effective expression in the workplace.
Your employees will be able to communicate more effectively both with one another and with your customers, which is a win-win situation. By developing their communication skills, you’ll be empowering them to express themselves more clearly, listen more actively and attentively, and achieve better outcomes from difficult conversations.
- Teamwork
- Time Management
Time management skills demonstrate the ability to use the work time wisely – plan time as required and allocate it reasonably for various tasks.
Improving time management empowers your employees to achieve their working goals more efficiently. This process, in turn, leads to improved efficiency and heightened productivity.
- Problem Solving
Problem-solving abilities blend the use of analytical and creative thinking to find solutions.
Your employees will be more proactive when it comes to recognizing problems and potential roadblocks to projects, tasks, and goals. They’ll also be better equipped to identify and implement solutions or come up with alternative fixes.
- Critical Thinking
This is the ability to analyze information objectively, assess different perspectives, and reach logical conclusions without being influenced by emotion or personal biases.
It fosters your employees’ ability to “think outside the box.” By using these skills, they will be able to weigh the pros on cons of different options and make informed decisions. This makes it far more likely that they will achieve the desired results for your business.