Why soft skills training should be a focus for your upskilling
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27/09/2018
For any business hoping to attract and retain the best talent, upskilling must be prioritised. Indeed, the millennial workforce currently flooding the job market finds opportunities for progression the biggest draw an employer can offer, according to a survey by PwC.
Years of specialised recruiting has taught the team at KLC that most businesses are keen to offer development opportunities for their staff, but don’t always know where to start. The publication of the 2018 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report offers some guidance, and highlights the continued importance of soft skills training in today’s job market.
Let’s examine the most important of these, and how they can benefit your business.
Offering leadership training to employees is beneficial to them, and your business.
1. Leadership
The most important soft skill for employees to learn, according to executive respondents to the LinkedIn survey, was leadership.
Whilst you may think that only those in managerial positions need training with these attributes, there are a number of benefits to enabling all employees to think like leaders.
- Empowerment: Teaching those within your organisation what makes a good leader will empower them to take greater ownership of their own tasks.
- Resourcefulness: A worker who can perform their role when everything is running smoothly is one thing, someone able to take the reins and deliver results when disaster strikes is quite another. Leadership skills training will equip staff with the ability to trust their initiative rather than wasting time escalating problems.
- Innovation: As well as dealing with position-specific issues, employees will feel more confident to share opinions on how the business could be be improved in terms of its process and operations.
2. Communication
With 64 per cent of the vote, communication came second in the executive survey.
Whether you run a not-for-profit in Melbourne or a social working company in Sydney, communication is the backbone of everything you do. There are specific benefits to developing communication skills for both managers and staff:
Managers:
- Running day-to-day business operations.
- Setting goals.
- Providing feedback.
- Recognising and rewarding individual contributions.
- Resolving conflicts.
Staff:
- Communicating with clients.
- Informing management of progress roadblocks.
- Liaising with the rest of the team to ensure targets are met.
The millennial workforce in particular expects regular interaction with managers as part of their routine. This demographic demands clear goals, and appropriate recognition for their efforts at work, suggests further research by PwC. Providing the necessary soft skills training is, therefore, vital to ensure these that conversations are productive and workers feel listened to.
Collaborative workplaces can increase increase employee job satisfaction.
3. Collaboration
The traditional idea behind teamwork is that, by pooling efforts and resources, more gets done than by individuals acting in isolation. While this is still true today, however there are further benefits to collaboration.
Employees who work collaboratively show higher rates of job satisfaction, says data collected by Deloitte. By building a sense of community in your workplace you provide staff with support networks, as well as engendering a more fun and lively atmosphere.
You can ingrain a culture of collaboration into your training processes by developing employees at the same time. This comes with the significant advantage of cross-training, a process in which staff are offered skills in areas outside the requirements of their own specific role. This covers you in the case of unexpected absences – allowing another team member to seamlessly shoulder some of the additional workload until a more permanent solution can be found.
Training your employees is a win-win. Not only will your existing workforce be better equipped to complete their tasks, you make yourself a more attractive employer in the eyes of the next generation of potential employees. KLC knows what it takes to attract great staff, and we can take your talent search to the next level. For more information, get in touch with the team today.
