In the past, hiring managers assessed job candidates by their technical proficiency and their ability to deliver specific products at a rapid rate. Today, it’s estimated that 85% of job success is attributed to soft skills, while only 15% is derived from technical abilities. But deciding how to teach soft skills to employees can seem overwhelming.
Modern technology is evolving more rapidly than the time required to get a formal education. Executives estimate that nearly half of the skills in today’s workforce won’t be relevant in a year. To navigate these changes, employees will need core skills to use as they adapt to new and changing roles. Soft skills training provides employees with interpersonal skills they can use in multiple job positions. However, soft skills development isn’t as clearly defined as training for technical skills.
So, how can employers learn how to teach soft skills to employees?
In this guide, we’ll share:
- What soft skills are and some of the most important soft skills for business success
- How soft skills differ from hard skills
- The importance of soft skills in the workplace
- How to teach soft skills to employees
What are soft skills?
Whether you realize it or not, everyone possesses some soft skills. You may think of them as communicative personality traits or people skills. Soft skills are interactive skills that improve communication and understanding. They are often called transferrable skills and include listening skills, time management, and flexibility. Like technical skills required for specific job roles, soft skills can be taught for improved workplace performance.
While they may seem inconsequential in the workplace, soft skills development is crucial for all employees, from new hires to experienced professionals. They help employees navigate challenging situations and build strong relationships with team members. They’re even considered an essential component of leadership skills. Although soft skills aren’t typically included in employee learning objectives, their value is becoming more widely recognized in training courses. Before determining how to teach soft skills to your employees, consider which skills will add the most value to your work environment.
Examples of soft skills include:
- Critical thinking
- Decision making
- Teamwork
- Communication skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Active listening
- Time management
- Adaptability
- Emotional intelligence
- Conflict resolution
How do soft skills differ from hard skills?
Soft skills are transferable skills that can be used across multiple roles. They generally include competencies that help you communicate with others. While they may not be listed as requirements for a specific position, they help employees perform well in practically every role.
Hard skills are the technical skills required to perform specific tasks in a job position. They can include educational requirements, proficiency using specific platforms, software, or programs, and mechanical experience. In other words, hard skills are tangible skills related to job performance.
While both types of skills matter, hard skills aren’t always transferrable across multiple roles.
The importance of soft skills
Soft skills encourage successful interactions between all types of individuals. This can improve communications between employees and upper management, enhance team collaboration, and promote excellent customer service. While it might be clear that these skills are essential in management and customer-facing roles, you may wonder how they apply to traditional roles. The truth is that these competencies improve how employees conduct themselves in the workplace and perform their required duties.
As a result, they offer these essential benefits for businesses that know how to teach soft skills to employees.
- Employee retention: Soft skills enhance communication and collaboration between coworkers, improving the workplace environment, boosting morale, and building retention.
- Flexibility: Agility is critical in the modern workplace. Soft skills training helps employees have the confidence to take initiative and make critical business decisions when conditions change unexpectedly.
- Collaboration: Improved communication skills among team members enhance collaboration to boost teamwork and creativity.
- Improved customer relations: Skills like active listening, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution relate directly to providing excellent customer service.
- Succession planning: Soft skills are sought after in leadership roles. By incorporating them into all employee training programs, you can prepare employees for promotions within the organization and seamlessly fill leadership roles.
How to teach soft skills to employees
Like technical skills, employers can teach soft skills through learning and development programs. While the competencies seem radically different, the approach to teaching can be carried out similarly. For example, your training programs should center around how the skills align with your business objectives, and multiple learning methods can boost learner engagement.
Employee development programs come in all shapes and sizes. From a formal classroom environment to online learning or hands-on learning sessions, choosing how to teach soft skills to employees begins by exploring your options. These approaches can assist you in developing an effective learning program to help employees build soft skills.
1. Cultivate an organization-wide learning mindset
When you establish a work environment that cultivates learning, employees are more open to participating in programs to develop new skills. To create a learning mindset in your organization, encourage learning and offer incentives for employees who complete programs successfully. As this mindset develops throughout your company, incorporate it into your employee branding to attract employees who are willing to learn.
2. Identify employee skills gaps
Identifying employee training needs is the first step in accurately choosing how to teach soft skills to employees. A skills gap analysis is one of the most effective ways to identify the soft skills that employees need most. You can gather information through surveys, workplace performance assessments, and talking to managers and team leaders. The information can then help guide the development of a successful soft skills training program.
3. Personalize the learning experience
Using different types of learning modalities can better engage learners. Personalize the learning experience by offering a combination of bite-sized learning, videos, webinars, classroom learning, and hands-on programs like real-world simulations. You can better understand how your employees learn best by conducting surveys about learning preferences before developing a soft skills training program.
4. Incorporate mentoring and cross-training into your soft skills training program
According to a McKinsey study, lack of career development and advancement was the number one reason employees quit their jobs between April 2021 and April 2022. The opportunity for upward mobility can promote job security and improve retention. By incorporating cross-training into your soft skills program, you can prepare employees to fill vacant roles and work across departments. Establishing mentorship programs helps employees build relationships with coworkers and implement collaboration for improved teamwork and a more positive workplace environment.
5. Leverage your learning management system (LMS)
Your LMS is a valuable tool for planning and strategizing employee development in your organization. Using LMS software that enforces formal and informal learning methods can help you establish a collaborative learning environment that enables employees from various departments to share company and industry knowledge. The right LMS can help you incorporate soft skills training into your development programs with templates and tools to guide your learning process—and even track results.
6. Consider online learning
Online learning is rapidly growing as one of the most effective ways to train employees. E-learning enables organizations to create scalable learning and development programs with multiple modalities to increase engagement. It also promotes the benefits of self-paced learning that is available on-demand to work with your employees’ schedules. Many e-learning platforms include tools for assessing learner participation rates and analyzing success.
7. Measure the results
Any learning and development program is only effective if it produces the desired results. To understand how well your soft skills training programs are working, you need a strategy for measuring the business impact of learning.
Measuring employee development enables you to produce evidence to support your training budget and continued education for employees. You can also use the data you collect to examine the learning methods that work best for your team.
By continually tracking results, you can make changes to your learning programs that scale with your business and meet employees’ needs. Using specific KPIs such as employee performance and engagement, along with the data from quizzes and assessments, allows you to gain insight into how well your L&D efforts align with your business objectives. As a result, you can consistently develop successful learning programs that meet employee and organizational needs.
Support Your Soft Skills Training with the Right LMS
To encourage retention for a strong and flexible future workforce, modern companies will need to learn how to teach soft skills to employees. By offering engaging learning experiences to your employees, you can develop a culture of learning that helps you meet business objectives and helps your employees reach their career goals.
Learning management systems can help you develop and deliver training programs for effectively teaching soft skills to employees. When you choose an LMS like Docebo that supports multiple team sizes and a variety of learning types, you can personalize soft skills training to your unique organizational environment and business goals. By using platform data collection and measurement tools, you can analyze the success of your learning program and effectively tie learning to business outcomes.
