17 Mar Why soft skills are more important now than ever before
Have you ever heard the phrase “communication is key”? There’s a reason people say that so often. Soft skills, like communication, better serve people in every day life, especially at work or in school.
Almost every workplace revolves around people. Therefore possessing a strong set of soft, or “social” skills provides an advantage for you throughout your career. Being able to communicate with clients and coworkers in an efficient way saves time and confusion later on. Critical thinking skills are essential for making the high-risk decisions in business. Working in teams takes place more often than not, so having the ability to collaborate with others is crucial as well.
These skills are not effortlessly attained, as shown by the lack of soft skills in today’s job market. On top of that, a recent study revealed that employers have an increasing demand for jobs that require soft skills. In order to bridge this gap in the job market and set people up for success, students and employees need the resources to constantly improve upon such skills as communication and critical thinking.
Higher education is the opportune time to develop and refine these soft skills because it provides learning experiences in life-like scenarios. The framework at most universities fails to give students these important learning experiences. Students cannot improve without first authentically demonstrating their skills and knowledge. Therefore, higher education needs to incorporate more soft skills practice and assessment into class curriculums in order to prepare them for their careers after college.
The continuous improvement and mastery of these skills throughout a career is just as important. A scalable, affordable approach for employees to demonstrate their skills and knowledge while receiving meaningful feedback doesn’t exist in traditional corporate training. This makes it difficult for people to realize which of their soft skills need improving and the problems in the workplace caused by this will continue.
Not only are soft skills the foundation for a successful career, they help establish and enhance the relationships in your personal life as well.
“Communication is key”… as well as critical thinking, collaboration, and all the other soft skills necessary to add value in the classroom, the workplace, or even your own home.