We see companies provide development opportunities for hard skills but rarely support them in the same way for Hard-Skill Training. Employers often neglect them, forgetting they’re also an integral part of any workplace.
This blog will discuss how to measure soft skills and eight tips on setting up an employee development plan that incorporates soft skills training.
Table of Contents
Factors for Development: Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Hard skills involve knowledge employees learn either through experience or through training. They are the technical skills one must possess to get the job done. Examples of hard skills include:
- Foreign languages
- Degrees and other certifications
- Data engineering
- Database management
- Google Analytics
On the other hand, soft skills are related to the nature of a person. The people skills are much harder to quantify and standardize than the hard skills, but not impossible. Some examples of soft skills are:
- Critical thinking
- Problem-solving
- Persuasion
Differences between Soft and Hard Skills:
| Soft Skills | Hard Skills |
| Difficult to assess | Easier to quantify |
| They are inherent/innate, challenging to earn/grow them | Usually learned through education, training, or first-hand experience |
| Involve character traits and qualities | Involve skills and abilities |
How to Measure Hard and Soft skills:
Measuring Hard Skills: Skill Matrix
A skills matrix is a tool to map out an employee’s skills and abilities. The result can be used for many purposes, such as assigning a specific role that requires expertise with certain software, seeing what skills are still missing in a team, or giving employee-specific training.
Soft-Skills Assessment:
Since soft skills are more into people skills, the best way to assess them is to ask others’ opinions. This can be done by gathering feedback from the managers, team leaders, the rest of the team, and by conducting Cognitive ability test whenever required. Then create an assessment to evaluate their performance and indicate areas that still need work.
Importance of Soft Skills:
Companies often view soft skills as unimportant, focusing on hard skills training. If you also think so, these points may change your mind:
- They nurture relationships. Skills such as teamwork and leadership are vital for maintaining good connections in the workplace.
- Soft skills show initiative in employees. These skills enable you to collaborate with others and brainstorm new ideas.
- They instil and grow confidence in employees.
- Soft skills ensure companies retain employees for longer since they influence work values and culture.
8 Actionable Strategies to Develop Soft Skills:
Soft skills are undeniably essential to conduct daily business effectively yet are challenging to develop. Of course, you can always send your team to attend leadership webinars. However, the effectiveness is questionable as it only focuses on the day of the event instead of repetitive and first-hand training. We’ve collected some strategies that can help you support the growth of your team’s soft skills below.
Job Rotation Within the Team:
Consider rotating jobs within the teams. Create a duty roster outlining when rotation starts and ends to ease confusion. By encouraging job rotation, members get to interact personally, strengthening relationships both inside and out of the office, and promoting employee enablement. Similarly, rotating jobs create room for empathy. They experience how to do the tasks of others, fostering a better understanding of the colleague’s job, including the pressure and enjoyable moments attached to the role. It is an excellent method to cultivate compassion.
Increase Teamwork:
Below are some ways you can increase teamwork to develop better soft skills:
- Encourage diversity by grouping employees from different backgrounds in one team
- Define responsibilities clearly for each member to avoid task overlaps
- Foster personal interaction that can lead to better trust and comfortableness in working with others
- For managers, resist the urge to micromanage; give your employees autonomy
Be a Mentor/Join Buddy Program:
Organize a mentoring program or buddy program for your employees. Not only are people the best source to learn new skills, but it also encourages individuals to practice their people and leadership skills.
A buddy program is crucial for new talent, as they will feel nurtured and welcomed by the team.
Be the Company’s Ambassador: Employer Branding:
Employer branding is a great way to develop soft skills. Consider getting your employees to make a short video detailing the positive aspects of working there. They can also market your brand by word of mouth to their friends and other people.
It’s an excellent way to learn public speaking, creative thinking, and persuasion skills.
Assign a Specific Task to a Specific Person:
A good leader knows how to delegate, and usually, the appointed person is someone who has the best skill in that area. However, as the goal is to develop specific skills, delegate the task to someone who needs some improvement in this particular domain.
For example, someone who is shy could try to become the company’s ambassador or ask a team member who lacks managerial skills to organize a Christmas party. Then, as they become more confident, assign them a more challenging task.
Regularly Seek Feedback@
Ask your employees to give team feedback regularly. Set up scheduled meetings with the whole team where everyone can contribute. The ideas and suggestions will create the framework for developing solutions to current challenges.
What’s more, employees can pick up a few helpful pointers from these interactive sessions. Implement an open-door policy where people are free to discuss whatever’s on their minds. In addition, create suggestion boxes where people can drop written suggestions if they are reluctant to talk in person.
Learn to Listen:
Encourage open communication and empathy in your workplace. These values are important for developing soft skills. You need first to learn to listen to grow your people skills. You have to meet people at their level to serve them better.
How to Foster a Soft-Skill Development Mindset:
Hands-On Experience Instead of Sending Employees to Training:
As mentioned before, try adopting a hands-on experience instead of sending your workers to seminars and workshops. They’re more likely to retain information from someone relatable and familiar. Plus, practicing it in real-life situations creates a more profound learning experience for your employees.
Beacon Your Employees on the Path of Self-Improvement:
Give them the necessary resources to foster a soft skill development mindset. They can be in the form of:
- non-discriminatory policy
- emotional support
- role model scenarios
- learning resources such as webinars, online classes, and tutorials
Cross-Department Interactions:
Consider swapping contacts across departments from time to time. This can be in the forms of organizing company events, employee competitions, and lunch roulette, among others. Consequently, they could learn valuable new skills from interacting with new team members.
Bottom Line:
Both hard and soft skills are vital to any workplace. Unfortunately, most companies ignore soft skills and focus on developing hard skills. They fail to understand that people skills are just as necessary as technical expertise.
Soft skills ensure employees uphold values such as teamwork and collaboration. They also grow and nurture positive workplace relations. Lastly, soft skills contribute to higher employee retention rates.
Author’s bio: Raisa Yogiaman is a content marketer at Zavvy – an employee enablement platform that combines employee experience with smart workflow automation. Her passion for HR and marketing can be found on Zavvy’s blogs.
