Human skills is the new soft skills

Soft skills refer to both character traits and interpersonal skills that will influence how well a person can work or interact with others. The term soft skills covers a wide range of skills as diverse as teamwork, time management, empathy and delegation.

A past World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report had suggested that by 2025, complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management and emotional intelligence would be among the most important skills required in the workplace.

The importance of these soft skills is often undervalued, and there is far less training provided for them than hard skills such as coding. Organizations seem to expect people know how to behave on the job and the importance of skills such as taking initiative, communicating effectively and listening, which often is not the case.

Currently, the most in-demand soft skills are the following:

• Communication
• Organisation
• Teamwork
• Critical thinking
• Social skills
• Creativity
• Interpersonal communication
• Adaptability

Not soft skills; Human skills

Nowadays, an increasing number of people point out that “soft skills” should not be characterized as “soft” anymore. The main 2 categories for skills people have in the workplace are the following: hard skills and human skills.

Hard skills are needed to do your job, but human skills allow people to be better leaders. If we want to become good leaders and inspire the others, we need to have high human skills. And this is a big problem nowadays: people don’t know how to lead. To make matters worse, some companies around the world keep defining and measuring performance in all the traditional ways. Unfortunately, competencies that are needed in today’s challenging business climate, are often overlooked by many recruiters. 

But businesses should pay special attention to the so-called “soft skills”. In the last few years, these skills are beginning to be recognized as strong competencies. For example, there are companies who prefer trustworthy employees over high-performance individuals who cannot be trusted. People who can’t trust and cannot be trusted, are toxic team members. Hiring someone for being able to have emotional control and high EQ, can make a significant difference between a candidate who looks great on paper and has a strong CV and someone who will excel once they’re hired. 

At this point, we should mention that it is important to stop promoting toxic team members and toxic hustle cultures just because they over-index on performance. At the end of the day the most important assets to have, is to be a good listener, to exercise empathy and to be patient. And this is because human communication is not “soft”; it is deep and complex.

But just like the hard, “soft” skills must also be learned. In a fast-paced environment full of changes and challenges, there is nothing soft about learning and developing abilities that help you stay calm and focused. There is nothing more useful than knowing how to motivate the others, how to provide the conditions for them to motivate themselves, how to confront in a meaningful and fruitful way and how to build long lasting relationships.

Despite the fact that often “soft” skills can be learned, the emotional intelligence can also be bolstered. Those who have been trained to enhance their soft skillset, however, understand that human skills are anything, but a given.

The importance of soft skills to businesses

In addition to personal development, soft skills can have significant benefits for organizations as well. More specifically, soft skills can lead to:

• Increased productivity: Employees’ efficiency in their tasks and responsibilities increases which will help bring the company closer to achieving its goals.
• Improved teamwork: For a business to function effectively people must work well together in order to achieve a common goal. The quality of work improves when people use their individual strengths and skills together in collaboration.
• Improved retention rates: People want to work at a company that invests in employees’ career development, in fact, 63% of UK employees would change their employer if they are offered a job at a company with more training opportunities. Also, recruitment costs for the company decrease with increased staff retention.
• Improved employee satisfaction: Investing in employees’ shows them that they are valued. Feeling appreciated and having a positive outlook of the company increases job satisfaction.
• Improved leadership: Soft skills help prepare employees for leadership positions because specific skills are needed, such as, active listening, empathy etc. This is important because 50% of employees leave their job due to poor managers.
• Attracts new clients: If clients are happy with a company’s service, they are more likely to recommend it to other clients. This provides the company with new business opportunities.
• Increased workplace communication: Effective communication between staff increases which consequently reduces the risk of messages becoming distorted. This allows the company to operate more smoothly.

According to the National Soft Skills Association…

Emotional intelligence is a learned ability to identify, experience, understand, and express human emotions in healthy and productive way. Emotional intelligence skills form the base of competencies that all soft skills are built upon.