Increasingly more focus is put on soft skills in the business world. Employers do not only want well educated staff, they want more than that. But what are soft skills and why are they indispensable at the workplace? And how can you improve your soft skills through our business simulations? Read everything you need to know about soft skills in our article below.
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What are soft skills?
“Soft skills” is an umbrella concept for everything that is not a measurable technical skill. Offering a short explanation, the term is generally used to describe someone’s ability to navigate their social environment, work well with others, and, in having these skills, achieve their career goals.
Examples of soft skills include a person’s communication skills, their willingness to be flexible, their integrity and honesty. Furthermore, soft skills can include interpersonal abilities, having a positive attitude, taking responsibility, thriving in in a team, and having a good work ethic.
Soft skills vs. hard skills
The intangibility of soft skills is what puts them in stark opposition to hard skills. Hard skills are measurable, often rather technical, skills. These include math, accounting, writing, or programming skills. However, both types of skills are fundamental for success and complement each other perfectly.
The combination of hard skills and soft skills is what makes a well-rounded person, that can progress in their private and professional life equally. What is a well-educated colleague worth if they do not get along with the team?
Soft skills at the workplace
Developing your soft skills has therefore become indispensable at the workplace, and there are studies to support that claim.
A study conducted by Harvard University noted that 80% of career performance is determined by soft skills and only 20% by hard skills. Similarly, a study among fortune 500 CEOs conducted by the Stanford Research Institute found that 75% of your long-term job success are a direct result of soft skills.
Soft skills training
Experts recommend that soft skills training should thus form an integral part of education. This prepares students for what is expected of them at their future workplace.
Not mastering those soft skills can have unwanted consequences. A survey conducted by McDonald’s in the UK predicts that more than half a million people will be held back from job sectors by 2020 due to a lack of soft skills.
Soft skills are just as important as, if not more important than, technical skills. Most interactions with people require some level of soft skills – negotiating a new contract, presenting a new business idea, interviewing for a new job. Soft skills are the means by which a person sells their technical skills.
Devoting time to the teaching and development of soft skills is therefore a valuable investment in the future of learners. It might even be what sets them apart from other people in their field.
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