Did you know that 93% of employers said that Soft Skills are either an “essential” or “very important” factor in hiring decisions?
It’s clear to see that soft skills are becoming increasingly valuable to employers, and it’s clear to see why. Developing a person's soft skills can help shape their career and ensure that they can build long-lasting relationships at work.
The term ‘soft skills’ can be defined as the skills we use to communicate, build relationships, how we approach work and life, time management, and much more. They’re often associated with personality attributes such as high productivity, resilience, a strong work ethic, amongst a number of other attributes.
Nathan Pitman, Managing Director at iHASCO eLearning states “Soft skills are undoubtedly an important asset in the modern workplace. Soft skills can help make a person more employable and increase staff wellbeing, engagement and productivity. It's these skills that will help your employees excel in the workplace and effective training can put them in the best position to be a success and go above and beyond in the workplace.”
Why are soft skills important in the workplace?
It’s likely that employees will use one or more soft skills when they’re having any kind of interaction with someone. Developing these skills allows employees to develop and improve their career path, as well as providing value to their business in a number of other ways like winning business and building better relationships in the workplace.
Soft skills can have an impact on your business as a whole. They can impact how a business functions internally and externally. Workplaces have changed over the years as business owners now look at investing in their staff, as individuals, more and more. Soft skills are key to creating a positive and functional work environment.
Some of the key benefits of investing in developing the soft skills of your employees include:
- Strong soft skills can help employees to be more productive, encourage collaboration, help communication and listening skills between colleagues and create a healthy work environment
- It’s hard to get a computer to emulate human interactions and emotions so these skills will still be required from humans for years to come
- Helping with career progression and promotions
- Clients want to see these skills
- Due to the advances in technology and AI most likely removing the need for hard skills in people, soft skills will be largely accountable for jobs in the workplace in 2030
The need for soft skills is not going anywhere. As technology and jobs change, this means that the hard skills will change with them. But, the soft skills an employee carries now can be developed continually and they will be needed for the foreseeable future.
A study by the McKinsey Global Institute concluded that high-quality education should be offered to all levels of employees at all ages to ensure their skills are kept up-to-date in the world of work.
The group stated “Just as the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century drove an expansion of access to education, today’s technological revolution should drive further expansion to ensure universal, high-quality, affordable access to education from early childhood to retirement and to ensure that curricula include the DELTAs that will future-proof citizens’ skills in the world of work.”
Developing your employees soft skills
Training your staff in soft skills can really enhance your business and make you stand out from the crowd. Your staff will also be appreciative of the support with professional development.
Here at iHASCO, we understand that Soft Skills courses are a perfect way to increase staff engagement, motivation, and wellbeing; and help your staff develop personally as well as professionally. We offer a range of online Soft Skills Training courses that can help all levels of employees develop skills that will help them thrive in the workplace, including:
- Communication Skills
- Effective Meetings
- Confidence Building
- Speaking Confidently
- Critical Thinking
These courses also form part of our inclusive short-format course library, which comes free with any user-based plan, giving you the flexibility to offer staff a wide range of Soft Skills, text-based and audio-based courses at no extra cost!
Additionally, if you opt for a multi-year, user-based plan, you'll get access to iHASCO PLUS
for free, which includes:
- Branded training suites
- Document and policy storage and sharing tool
- SSO (Single Sign-On)
- Additional Citation benefits (Including unlimited access to a free HR advice line)
Request a quote today and we’ll be in touch to discuss your training requirements.
