Soft skills are hardening

Ever since our brains were first capable of thought, humans have specialised, honed and nurtured hard skills. They were essential for our survival and the progression of our rudimentary societies, and without sophisticated globally integrated civilisations why would we need anything else?

Looking back; there has been an overwhelming amount of jobs, ranging widely in industry and sector, but staying within the same general domain - manual labour. Ever since man stood up on his feet and walked the Earth, there have been humans engaging in manual work, requiring the development of specific skills, external skills, interchangeably linked to the task at hand - otherwise known as ‘hard skills’. Hard skills have been the main focus of human development for a long time, and even more so in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, where Man had to master machinery that required niche knowledge about different physical interactions to generate the desired outcome - usually one of production. Even with the onset of the technological revolution following the invention of the first digital computer, after World War II, and scurrying through the latter half of the twentieth century. Alongside the rapid onset of digital technology in the latter half of the twentieth century, just as much was required by manual workers[often referred to ‘blue-collar’] and the innovation in construction that started in the latter half of the century before, the nineteenth century.

When the twentieth century faded into the historical record, we saw the onset of another type of technological advance, not one of hardware as a sole perpetrator, but rather as the combination of software and hardware. Where the software had significant implications on content, but very much more so in the backend of the software - with the acceleration of data-collection, algorithms, big-data analysis, machine-learning algorithms and AI. This; as well as with the ever-increasing automation of traditional manufacturing jobs leads the World toward an intersection whereby manual action is obsolete for workers, and the hard skills of a nation's workforce are found to be redundant in the face of technology. Industries such as car-manufacturing saw the onset of advanced robotics that could assemble a car quicker and more efficiently than any human. Other sectors that saw rapid change were those of book-keeping, marketing and logistics. There was a lower demand for people with the ‘hard skills’ traditionally needed to perform the tasks and a higher demand for those with ‘soft skills’ - therein the skills that facilitate collaboration between people, setting the strategic direction for a business unit or otherwise, clear communication, public speaking, creativity, the ability to recognize and understand datasets, and much more.

How soft skills help businesses thrive - Things to take away

In business, there is no component higher than that of the individual employee. So it is natural to assume that the management and wellbeing of these individuals must remain at their current levels or improve when we look into the future, namely because of the increased needs of employees to work with technology, to collaborate cross-culturally and even from different locations, at an accelerated pace. The ideals of management and leadership have seen transformation throughout time, and with the change, there has been an increase in the need for people with management skills and communicative skills to enhance intra-and-inter-organisational efficiency.

Clear communication, listening and empathy are some critical skills for managers to utilise in order to work with their employees, and, stepping down a level in the corporate hierarchy, these skills are also vital for employees to possess such that they have a broader set of skills to work with their peers effectively, customers, suppliers and even their managers and leaders. When communication is clear, there is less friction between the interdependent functions, units, and departments of a business and its external stakeholders, thereby it is possible to correlate this occurrence of reduced friction, to an implicit increase in productivity or efficiency that could lead to several positives for any organisation - and depending on the objectives of such companies, increased profits or general wellbeing could be achieved as well as social milestones or other peripheral goals.

According to surveys and data conducted and collected from prominent companies around the World, such as Deloitte, McKinsey & Co and PwC, one can see that the focus on soft skills, indeed, is increasing compared to the need for hard skills. One of the reasons mentioned is that companies recognise that hard skills cannot be effectively executed and worked without the symbiotic nurturing by the fundamental soft skills correlated to the aforementioned. Furthermore, the piece argues that soft skills are also harder to learn than hard skills, precisely because they are interlinked with human nature on an individual level, and also because some soft skills are hardwired, whereby they can be honed, practised and improved, but if there is no basis for a quiet power in an individual it may be exponentially harder to attain a reasonable skill level, compared to learning a hard skill - where none starts with a high level, but everything is learned from scratch if you will.

Finally, as mentioned above, and as quoted in the piece;

“The modern market offers consumers an unlimited number of choices through technologies such as the internet and smartphones. For these consumers, convenience and low prices are easy to come by, so customer service is often what influences the choice to use a particular business. The ability to communicate efficiently and effectively with customers is, therefore, a vital factor in an organisation’s success.” -D. Hes, 2017

The future of management?

As mentioned previously in this paper, the managers of the future workplace must themselves also possess the soft skills that will become ever-increasingly important for their employees. Other aspects, as discussed in a report prepared by PwC, is that managers and leaders must not only possess these skills and identify and hire people based on their comprehension and exercise of soft skills, but also own the discussion of the future workplace. The PwC report found that more than a third of workers are anxious about their work-related future due to automation [digital or manual]. Therefore it is essential that managers and leaders lead the discussion of such matters, and not merely leave it for HR or the IT-departments of the company or organisation.

Furthermore, as indicated, when companies or organisations are looking for new talent to add to their existing teams, or when establishing new business units or otherwise, it is just as essential to hone the recruitment-process to look for candidates possessing the required soft skills to achieve a more agile and fluid flow of work within said business unit, company or organisation in order to make the maximum amount of efficiency - as it was when searching for candidates in earlier years, when the majority of productivity and efficiency was dependent on the hard skills possessed by the employee.

Finally, it is vital for managers and leaders to understand the needs of their employees, and how to optimise not only their wellbeing but also their performance by correctly matching individuals in teams and departments that have an empirically higher probability of achieving success in collaboration. Most of the time the desired attributes can be found by psychometric analysis, or through the quantification of soft skills through self-reporting, 360-analysis [external reporting on an individual by peers], or through observation. All of these things are interlinked in the workplace of the future, as we depend on each other more than on the physical and hard skills needed to perform any given task.

What about the individual?

To start of the argument, let us examine the following;

“As individuals – actual human beings – what do we need to do to thrive and prosper in whatever the new world brings? The secret for a bright future seems to me to lie in flexibility and in the ability to reinvent yourself. If you believe that the future lies in STEM skills and that interests you, train for that. But be prepared to rethink if the world doesn’t need so many programmers. If you are a great accountant who has prospered by building strong client relationships, think about how you can apply that capability, without necessarily having to be an accountant. Think about yourself as a bundle of skills and capabilities, not a defined role or profession.” -Carol Stubbings Global Leader, People and Organisation, PwC, 2019

The majority of the challenges faced in the workplace of the future, lie, as postulated previously in this paper, on the ability of the individual - not on performing a task, but on adapting to a new set of challenges, whilst keeping intact current skills, and adding new ones, interpersonal, strategic, and communicative skills as such. Even though most businesses can be expected to more thoroughly nurture the soft skills and development of these that they will need in the future, there also lies a sole burden on the shoulders of employees, as they must dedicate more of their time to that purpose as well. In his paper, B. Shulz also postulates that the development of soft skills cannot be relied upon to be developed by the educational institutions that the generation of today and next will attend to gain their diplomas. Soft skills and their development lies beyond the traditional academic domain, and in interpersonal relationships and human communication and collaboration therein. Thereby, it is possible to say that the sole burden of soft skill development lies on the individual or employee themselves. However, they will be right in expecting more structured and nurtured support from the companies and organisations moving forward, as it is an interlinked relationship serving both parties in the end.

What can we, as business people, draw from all of this?

The traditional jobs, employees and industries relied heavily on specialised skills for certain types of positions, jobs or even industry-bound or domain-specialised hard skills. As technology and automation continues to remove labour-intensive tasks in both manual labour, accounting, customer service amongst others, one will see an increasing shift in priority for both employers [i.e. companies or organisations] and even consumers - whereby they prioritise soft skills, or as they are described - the skills needed to communicate and work along with others effectively, and the interpersonal skills both external [toward customers] and internal [toward colleagues and partners].

The employees in the workplace of the future shall also prefer companies and organisations where they can exercise and improve these skills in themselves, and perhaps a structured development program or more mentoring is what is needed on behalf of these employees, from the employers. This has been indicated by Ashridge Business School, in their collaborative report with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development [CIPD] and the data therein, whereby it was discovered that more than two-thirds of millennials and gen-z employees want more coaching and mentorship from their managers and leaders, and thereby, by their companies and organisations. Therefore, we can conclude that the soft skills of today and tomorrow will be as essential for the function of a company as the hard skills required by industries in the century foregone.