Importance of Soft Skills
“The hard truth about soft skills they can make or break your career.” - Peggy Klaus
Soft skills are today's power skills. In today’s scenario, soft skills are sine qua non. It is difficult to survive in this world without having strong soft skills. As one goes higher up in the hierarchy in an organisation, the soft skills become more and more relevant and important. Not only professionally, soft skills are equally if not more important in personal life as well.
It has been known for 100 years that soft skills are six times more than hard skills for job success. Research conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research Center has all concluded that 85% of job success comes from having well‐developed soft and people skills, and only 15% of job success comes from technical skills and knowledge (hard skills).
A new study from Boston College, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan found that soft skills training, like communication and problem-solving, boosts productivity and retention 12 percent and delivers a 250 percent return on investment based on higher productivity and retention.
According to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report, executives now consider these skills important to fostering employee retention, improving leadership, and building a meaningful culture. In fact, 92 percent of Deloitte’s respondents rated soft skills as a critical priority.
Let’s look at some of the points related to importance of soft skills:
- Soft skills drive business outcomes
Having people with strong soft skills impacts the business positively. A survey of over 1,000 managers and employees (Deloitte Access Economics 2014), that employees who have and utilise teamwork skills (a soft skill) are 3% more productive, and worth almost $2,000 more per year to a business than those using less of these skills. Another study by Adhvaryu et al. in 2016 found that female employees in an Indian garment factory who were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program recorded a 12% increase in productivity.
- Soft skills help you become a better human being and a good professional
As sometimes, soft skills are also referred to as life skills, strong soft skills help us become good beings. A good being develops into a good professional.
- Hard skills require soft skills to be effective
No matter how knowledgeable a person is, s/he requires soft skills to be effective in his work. A sales executive might have excellent knowledge of products but if s/he is not able to communicate or empathise properly with customer, his knowledge is of no use. Similarly, if a manager does not possess good soft skills, s/he can work with his / her team effectively.
- Workplace is collaborative
Collaboration and cooperation is required at the workplace. One needs to listen, understand and communicate to work in teams. People with strong soft skills are able to work together effectively in a healthy work environment, solve problems, think creatively leading to achievement of organisational goals.
- Soft skills are essential for customers
The products and services get copied in no time in this competitive world. The only thing that differentiates the winner is the excellent customer service. Excellent service requires ability to listen, understand, empathsise and communicate effectively with customer. Soft skills play the most important role in delighting the customer.
- Reliance of future work place on soft skills
More and more technical jobs are becoming commoditised and key differentiating factor would be soft skills. The demand for soft skills is expected to increase. A study by Deloitte Access Economics in Australia found that soft skill intensive occupations are growing 2.5 times more quickly than more other occupations and that by 2030 are expected to account for two thirds of all jobs in the economy. This trend is expected to be the same globally.
Soft skills can be learned. Soft skills help create strong people, teams, leaders and organisations leading to harmonious, healthy work environment. Not only this, people become proactive, take initiative, assume responsibility, think creatively, solve problems. This in turn improves productivity and impacts the organisation positively
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