Companies often prioritize hard skill development when onboarding new employees or training existing ones. These are technical skills and knowledge that employees need to perform their jobs. As a result, soft skills learning falls to the wayside or is ignored altogether.
Companies are now dealing with not paying enough attention to corporate soft skills learning. The soft skills gap means more employees lack professional communication, problem-solving, decision-making, and leadership skills, among others.
Common Soft Skills Challenges in the Workplace
Here are some of the most common reasons that employees lack sufficient soft skills development in the workplace and why this is a major course for concern for businesses.
Organizations Block Employees from Learning Soft Skills
Rather than investing in robust soft skills workshops to upskill employees, most organizations take the ostensibly easier route of hiring new employees who claim to have the skills they’re looking for. There are a few problems with this approach.
First, candidates tend to embellish their skills on their resume. Second, there’s no guarantee that these candidates possess the skills they say they do. Hiring new candidates also comes with the risk of increasing your turnaround rates if things don’t work out as expected. It’s better to invest in your current employees’ soft skills development than incur unnecessary financial risks.
Leaders Ignore Soft Skills Gaps in Employees
Many employers are under the false impression that they’re already providing employees with the necessary soft skills and resources to perform their jobs successfully. But broad soft skills training workshops aren’t enough to close the soft skills gap in the workforce.
Customized soft skills workshops that highlight each employee’s unique capabilities and help them hone their strengths are far more effective than simply offering a one-size-fits-all blanket solution that doesn’t address the core problem.
Leaders Rely Too Much on Old Training Methods
Outdated training methods aren’t relevant to your current workforce. In fact, you should be reviewing your corporate hard and soft skill training manuals at least once a year to make necessary adjustments. If you can’t remember the last time your training manual was updated, then that’s an excellent place to start to upskill your employees.
Employees Aren’t Getting Enough Motivation to Learn New Skills
Employees that have been with the same company for a long time probably won’t be as motivated to pick up new skills as new hires who have something to prove and want to make it past the probation period. Leaders need to take the initiative by incentivizing and motivating all of their employees to want to learn new industry-related hard and soft skills.
Start with small gestures and rewards to encourage employees to hone their skills and ask for feedback on these programs. Show your employees how much you value their time, opinions, and skills.
Lack of Self Understanding and Skill Measuring
Sometimes, employees simply don’t recognize their skills or talents. This is a potential blind spot that can prevent them from doing their absolute best work. Recognizing special skills and capabilities in your employees will help them better understand their value so they can actively improve those skills.
How Soft Skill Development Workshops Can Help?
The Soft Skills Group offers hybrid soft skills learning workshops by combining in-person and online soft skills training sessions custom-tailored to your specific corporate objectives. We’ll work with your team to help each individual recognize their unique professional traits that make them an asset to your company so they can utilize those skills to be more productive. Book your soft skills learning workshop today!
