Activities That Build Soft Skills In The Workplace

Many will not tell you this but employees usually stumble on skills gaps while performing complex tasks or helping challenging customers. Which also happens to be the most inopportune time to disclose hidden pain points. They lose face in front of their peers, and your customers and may even cost you valuable business. The good news is, you can help your employees identify areas for improvement in a risk-free setting. Simply add simulations, scenarios, and other interactive resource tools in your interactions and this will allow your employees to hone their talents and learn from their mistakes before they clock in.

To build soft skills in the workplace and instill self-confidence in your team, come up with difficult customer simulations. ?All customer service employees have dealt with difficult consumers from time to time. Some people won’t take ‘no’ for an answer or simply aren’t happy with any solution provided. The only way to overcome this obstacle is to hone soft skills like compassion, active listening, and creative problem-solving. So, immerse your employees in simulations that expose them to ‘cranky’ customers who require a high level of tact and interpersonal skills. For example, they must listen to the virtual consumer’s complaint and find the best resolution. Without violating company policy or losing repeat business.

Secondly, design conflict resolution scenarios. While it’s not just unhappy customers your employees need to consider, there may also be conflicts among co-workers and team leaders. Conflict resolution scenarios enable team members to assess the situation, listen to all sides of the story, then find the best remedy. For instance, employees need to ask all the right questions to get all points of view and appease both parties without pointing fingers. They shouldn’t have to play the role of mediator in every quarrel but with this kind of activity designed, they can avoid on-the-job arguments.

Thirdly, introduce empathy-building personal anecdotes. This could just be a story to stress the importance of understanding, communication, and compassion and it will get the employees to see things from a different perspective and learn about others’ coping mechanisms and motivations. For example, the angry customer who lashed out at you might have had a bad day. Their way of dealing with the stress was to take it out on the nearest employee. Your anecdote shows employee training participants that there are always two sides to the story. Listening to the customer’s needs and trying to empathize with their situation can work wonders.

Fourthly, create teamwork collaborations. You can do this by dividing employees into groups and assigning them a problem or training topic. Such that one team must evaluate a work-related task and figure out which soft skills are involved. As well as how they can build each skill to improve their performance.

Lastly, have adaptability serious games. Here, employees must be able to adapt to the situation without losing their calm. If employees had to interact with the same customer or challenge every day, work would be very dull. Serious games test their ability to change based on the circumstances. For example, every level of the game can feature a new project management conundrum or sales scenario and employees must navigate the challenge using their soft skills and preexisting knowledge. This will force employees to rethink their decisions moving forward.

Now that you know what to do to build your team’s soft skills, click here www.zydii.com to get started.?