Soft skills are the character traits and interpersonal skills that determine how well a person can work or interact with others. The term soft skills covers a wide range of related skills, including teamwork, empathy, time management, and delegation.
Today, many employers consider soft skills just as – if not more – important as teachable hard skills.
In fact, recent research suggested that two-thirds of employers value soft skills more than educational qualifications when hiring, and 44% believe candidates lack the soft skills they need to succeed in their roles.
And that’s not all.
Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report found that over 90% of executives rated soft skills as a priority for their employees, while the Harvard Business Review found that having stronger soft skills correlated to earning a higher salary.
This means that mastering soft skills is an essential part of modern career development and will help you climb the ladder and achieve career success.
What Are Soft Skills?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines soft skills as “people’s abilities to communicate with each other and work well together”.
In essence, soft skills are personal attributes that are linked to how you work and interact with others. Soft skills make it easier to form relationships with other people, which makes you memorable for the right reasons.
Regardless of where you work or what job you have, you’ll need to have soft skills. For many people soft skills are the most difficult skill set to develop – but they can also be the most beneficial to your career.
Being an efficient, personable team player who’s also easy to work with goes a long way when it comes to career development.
Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills
Hard skills are the abilities directly linked to the job. These job-specific skills, such as, computer programming, data analysis, or bricklaying, are quantifiable, testable, and often easier to learn when compared to soft skills.
| Soft skills | Hard skills |
| Emotional | Technical |
| Valuable for all jobs (transferable) | Valuable for specific jobs |
| Not easily learned | Learned through training |
| Determines your success | Minimum requirement |
Both soft skills and hard skills are needed in the workplace, and it’s not enough to have one but not the other. For example, a library administrator needs to be proficient in IT tasks (hard skills) and must also interact with customers and colleagues effectively (soft skills).
Why Are Soft Skills Important?
Most interactions with other people require some level of soft skills. At a company, you might be negotiating to win a new contract, presenting your new idea to colleagues, or networking for a new job. We use soft skills everyday at work, and developing these soft skills will help you win more business and accelerate your career progression.
On the other hand, a lack of soft skills can limit your career potential, or even be the downfall of your business.
People like working with others who are personable, can work as a team, and lead by example. By developing strong leadership, delegation, teamwork, and communication abilities, you can run projects more smoothly, deliver results that please everyone, and improve how you interact with others in your day-to-day role.
Outside of the office, soft skills such as communication are used to build friendship groups and meet potential partners. You might be negotiating the price of your new house renovation, or mentoring your neighbours’ children on the weekend. Soft skills are useful both in our professional and personal lives.
Let’s hone in on some specific areas where soft skills are particularly important:
Career Progression and Getting Promoted
An iCIMS Hiring Insights report found that “94% of recruiting professionals believe an employee with stronger soft skills has a better chance of being promoted to a leadership position than an employee with more years of experience but weaker soft skills.”
It has become vital to develop your soft skills if you want to progress in your career as they’ll set you apart from others during the interview stage and on the job.
To highlight your soft skills to a potential employer, it’s important to use your CV or résumé to highlight situations where you used soft skills like leadership or teamwork, before proving your soft skill ability by making a great impression in interviews.
The Modern Workplace is Interpersonal
Skills such as active listening, collaboration, presenting ideas and communicating with colleagues are all highly valued in the modern workplace, with one report stating that “84% of employees and managers believe new employees must possess soft skills and demonstrate them in the hiring process”.
Strong soft skills ensure a productive, collaborative and healthy work environment, all crucial attributes for organizations in an increasingly competitive business landscape.
Customers and Clients Demand Soft Skills
The modern consumer has a huge number of choices of where to buy from, in large part thanks to the internet and easy access to global markets. As a result, for many consumers, convenience and low prices are easy to come by.
This means that customer service becomes the differentiator, influencing choices to use one particular business over another. The ability to communicate at a human level with customers is therefore a vital factor in an organization’s success.
The Future Workplace Will Rely On Soft Skills
Automation and artificial intelligence will result in a greater proportion of jobs relying on soft skills. Advances in technology have caused tasks that require hard skills to decline, making soft skills a key differentiator in the workplace.
In fact, a study by Deloitte Access Economics predicts that “soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030”.As the cost of automation decreases and the performance of artificial intelligence improves, it’s likely that hard skill-centric jobs like those done by manufacturing line workers will become automated.
This will humans competing for jobs that rely on traditional soft skills like teamwork, communication and critical thinking, making those skills more important than ever.
While soft skills can be difficult to teach and track improvements on, companies such as VirtualSpeech are tackling this by using VR as a way to improve soft skills.
Soft Skills are in High Demand by Recruiters
As discussed earlier, soft skills are in increasingly higher demand among employers in the workforce.
According to a 2017 paper by a Harvard student on the importance of social skills in the labour market, jobs requiring high levels of social interaction grew by nearly 12% as a share of the U.S. labour force between 1980 and 2012, with that number likely to continue increasing as years go by.
Which soft skills are the most in-demand? LinkedIn research ranks these as the top 10 most desirable among employers:
- Adaptability
- Communication
- Customer Service
- Leadership
- Project Management
- Management
- Analytics
- Teamwork
- Sales
- Problem-Solving
- Research
What are the Top Soft Skills?
Employers value a whole host of soft skills – and search for people who already possess them due to the fact that they’re difficult to teach. Let’s look at some of the most commonly sought-after soft skills in more detail:
Communication
Both written and verbal communication skills are important for the majority of jobs because they help you interact effectively with all of the people you encounter at work (such as customers, networkers, traders, colleagues) and build strong relationships.
You need to be able to communicate well across all platforms or mediums: face-to-face, video calls, over the phone, and via email.
Communication isn’t a one-way street, however, and having great communication skills isn’t just about getting your message across effectively.
It’s also necessary to develop your active listening skills – a technique which involves actually focusing on what the other person is saying, and basing your reply on that – rather than just waiting for it to be your turn to speak again.
Characteristics of an effective communicator:
- Active listening
- Adaptability – adapting your communication styles to support the situation
- Clarity
- Confidence and assertiveness
- Constructive feedback – giving and receiving it
- Emotional intelligence – identifying and managing your emotions, as well as other people’s emotions
- Empathy
- Interpersonal skills – social skills which are especially useful in building strong rapports
- Interpretation of body language – this will help you understand how someone is feeling
- Open-mindedness
- Patience
- Simplifying the complex
- Storytelling
Teamwork
For a business to function effectively, employees need to work well together in order to achieve a common goal. The quality of everyone’s work improves when people use their individual strengths and skills collectively in collaboration.
Employers seek out team players because:
- They’re less likely to cause conflict
- Teams who work well together have lower turnover rates
- Prospective employees are attracted to businesses with great cultures of teamwork
Some people struggle with teamwork because they feel that they know how to do the job better than anyone else – and don’t trust others to do their roles. This can create conflict and hurt both the effectiveness and morale of the team.
If this is something you find difficult, try to assist your colleagues whenever you can and ask your colleagues for their opinions and ideas. Be enthusiastic when colleagues offer their own ideas – there’s lots to learn from other people’s perspectives!
Characteristics of an effective team player:
- Active listening – listen to the concerns, opinions and ideas of others
- Assertiveness, but not aggression
- Collaboration and cooperation
- Coordination
- Delegation – if someone has (stronger) skills necessary for a task then delegate
- Empathy
- Following the leaders’ guidelines
- Giving and receiving constructive feedback
- Helping others problem-solve
- Interpersonal skills
- Knowing yourself e.g. your role, strengths and how you can best help.
- Mediating to bring about agreement
- Negotiation and compromise
- Self-awareness
- Sharing information and ideas
- Sharing the credit
- Showing appreciation and value for others’ skills, experiences and contributions
- Supporting the plan even if you don’t completely agree
Adaptability
When things don’t go the way you thought they would you need to adapt to the situation. Workplaces are always changing, with constantly shifting trends, best practices, and ways of working.
Employers will feel more comfortable if they have employees that can adapt to this change and are proactive in learning how to deal with it (Think attending training sessions or industry webinars, or conducting their own research).
Remain positive if there is a change in your workplace, and accept it rather than resist. Even better is to pass your learnings on to your colleagues so their transitions are made easier too. An employee that can work in this way is very valuable.
Characteristics of effective adaptability:
- Analysing
- Calmness
- Curiosity – you want to learn about the new item, method, technology, etc.
- Decision-making
- Discipline
- Flexibility
- Focus
- Handling of unexpected demands
- Open-mindedness
- Optimism and positivity
- Organisation
- Patience
- Self-confidence
- Self-management – taking responsibility of your own learning
- Self-motivation
Problem-Solving
Most jobs involve some element of problem-solving. Businesses value employees who can proactively come up with creative, effective solutions to the problems they’re facing in their role.
Most top performers deal with difficult challenges specifically because they possess strong problem-solving skills, and this type of creative thinking can lead to improvements big and small within organizations.
Characteristics of an effective problem-solver:
- Analysing
- Creativity
- Decision-making
- Determination
- Initiative
- Lateral thinking
- Logical reasoning
- Negotiation
- Observation
- Perseverance
- Persuasion
Leadership
You don’t have to be in a leadership role to demonstrate leadership skills. Employers look for these qualities to determine whether you can make important decisions, manage situations, and lead other people – they want to see whether you can grow beyond your current role and step up into more senior positions.
The best leaders can lead by example, manage complex situations, and can be trusted by their employer to handle large responsibilities.
Characteristics of an effective leader:
- Ability to work with minimal guidance and supervision
- Accountability and responsibility
- Active listening
- Authenticity
- Conflict resolution
- Decision-making
- Emotional intelligence
- Empathy
- Flexibility
- Generosity
- Modesty
- Motivating
- Selflessness
- Strategic planner
- Supportive
- Trustworthiness
- Delegation
- Crisis management
- Constructive feedback and encouragement
- Seeing the big picture
- Providing clear guidelines and instructions
The 5 C’s of Soft Skills Training
The 5 C’s are often described as the most important soft skills to focus your training on if you want to prepare for the workforce as a student, or accelerate your career growth as an employee.
They are:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Critical thinking
- Company behaviors
- (Curiosity is sometimes included)
You’ll notice that these align closely with the aforementioned list of in-demand soft skills. You can use the 5C’s as a framework to plan your development by focusing on the trait you feel you’re most lacking in – or you can use it as a useful memory device when you need to remember the most important soft skills.
How to Improve Soft Skills
As we’ve discussed, improving your soft skills can be tricky. The path to bettering your soft skills isn’t as straightforward as the path for hard skills, which usually involves traditional training and education techniques.
Effective soft skills training often requires a more blended learning journey – one that mixes traditional learning (like in-person training and e-learning courses), with non-traditional methods like virtual reality and online exercise-based training. Real-life exposure to situations that require soft skills helps too.
As an individual, you can take several steps to improve your soft skills:
- Participate in volunteering or other extra-curricular activities with other people
- Use platforms like VirtualSpeech to practice and improve your soft skills in a safe environment where you’re free to make mistakes and learn from them
- Take a formal soft skills course to improve and become certified in a specific trait, such as leadership
Improving Your Employees’ Soft Skills
As an employer or business, there are many benefits to supporting your employees’ soft skills development.
Employees with strong soft skills work better in a team environment, are more productive, and make great leaders. As a whole, organizations with strong soft skills see lower employee turnover rates and improved employee morale, making soft skill training a worthwhile investment.
By providing soft skills training, you’re showing your employees that you care about their professional development, and that you’re invested in creating a positive company culture. You’ll also prepare employees for internal promotions to leadership positions, providing a tangible progression goal for ambitious team members.
Designing a Soft Skills Training Program for Your Employees
If you want to provide soft skills training for your employees, you can either offer them a learning and development budget for use on external courses and workshops, or design a program that meets your business’s exact needs.
The latter requires you to plan your training approach by taking the following steps:
Decide what soft skills you need to train or improve
First, decide what soft skills are actually necessary for your employees to have – your aim is to align this training with your business goals. For example, if you want to increase sales, you may focus on improving the soft skills linked to this.
Evaluate your current training programs
Before implementing any new training, think about your existing programs. What’s covered? Where are the gaps? Could you implement the necessary soft skills training into an existing program, or do you need something entirely new?
Answering these questions will help you plot out exactly what your organization needs.
Decide on the format of your training
Once you know what you need, it’s time to think about the format – how are you going to deliver this training to your employees?
Mentoring, on-site classroom training, on-the-job learning, online classes and courses, and blended learning are all popular options but it’s important to consider the pros and cons of each.
For example, on-site classroom training is a classic choice that many businesses make, but it’s often expensive and difficult to scale.
The right format will depend on a number of factors, namely:
- Your company’s size
- The location of your employees (Are they all in one location, or spread over countries?)
- The type of content in the training program
Practical elements, like VirtualSpeech’s roleplays, always make for great inclusions in corporate training programs.
Rolling out the training program
Once you’re ready to roll your new soft skills training program out, there are a few more considerations to ensure it goes as planned.
First, identify the resources you need, such as documentation or schedules (this will depend on the type of training you are providing). Then ensure that your employees know about the training program and the benefits it will bring them, so that they’re encouraged to be enthusiastic participants.
Set tangible goals before the training program begins, so that you can track and assess whether it’s been as valuable as expected or had a positive impact on your employees’ soft skills. This means both measuring the quantitative effect of the training and getting qualitative feedback from participants.
Training program best practices
- Training and development opportunities should be easily accessible to everyone, otherwise employees won’t go out of their way to attend.
- Consider rewarding employees for getting involved with these opportunities to give them an incentive to complete the training.
- Employees often want to take control of their own development by choosing the content of their training and completing it when it suits them, and online training can be very effective for achieving this.
- Ensure that you accommodate different learning styles – some employees may learn better with visual materials, others with aural materials, and so on.
Top Soft Skills Training Apps
If you want to keep your soft skills sharp, these soft skills providers have apps you can use to stay on top of your career development:
Coursera
Coursera allows you to access more than 2,000 courses developed in collaboration with some of the best colleges and universities in the world. Coursera started by offering mostly computer science classes, they now cover a range of business and soft skills, from networking at events to learning a new language.
McKinsey Insights
The McKinsey Insights app allows you to access McKinsey’s latest thinking on the biggest issues facing senior executives, everything from leadership and corporate strategy to globalization and technology’s impact on business and society. Explore new insights on digitization and marketing, across industries such as energy, health care, and financial services at the touch of a button.
Skillsoft Percipio Learning App
Skillsoft’s Percipio Learning App allows you to improve yourself in minutes a day with short form learning modules. Access content across a variety of soft skills including business and personal development, and stay current with courses, videos, books, and audio books from experts.
edX – Online Courses by Harvard, MIT, and more
edX brings you online courses from top universities and institutions. Learn about communication, human psychology and many other broad soft skills with the edX app, which allows you to stream classes, download to watch offline, and test yourself with quizzes.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning allows you to accelerate your career development and discover in-demand soft skills, with personalized recommendations and courses taught by industry experts. LinkedIn offers particularly strong leadership and management training, with certifications you can share to your LinkedIn network upon completion.
Skillsta
Skillsta is an app designed to break down complex soft skill concepts into bite-sized practical lessons that fit your busy schedule. The app helps you develop essential soft skills with its personalized upskilling plans, right from your phone.
The Best Way to Develop Improve Soft Skills
As we’ve discussed, there are many approaches to improving you or your employees’ essential soft skills. VirtualSpeech is an award-winning, AI-powered soft skills platform that you can use in virtual reality or in your browser.
VirtualSpeech offers immersive training for soft skills, including public speaking, difficult conversations, interviews, negotiations, sales, and more which allows you to practice either, receive feedback on your performance, and then reflect with an AI coach.
Think VirtualSpeech is right for you or your business? Get in touch!
