How to Balance Soft & Hard Skills Development

Regardless of the industry or company, skills development should be on every employer’s mind. There are different kinds of skills required in today’s workforce. Soft, or people, skills are crucial for innovation, collaboration, and company culture. Hard, or technical, skills allow your employees to effectively carry out job functions.

Soft and hard skills are very different but equally as important. It can be challenging to balance the development of hard and soft skills within your organization. So, the question is – how do you offer skills development for both?

Defining Soft Skills & Their Importance

Soft skills really determine someone’s employability. They’re necessary to improve performance, communication, and teamwork. Often it can be tricky to measure them. Generally speaking, soft skills allow employees to handle situations better.

As organizations push diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) in the workplace, it’s increasingly important to develop soft skills. People must be mindful of how they interact with colleagues. Is everyone getting a say in team conversations? Or is there unintentional bias creating DEI gaps? Soft skills can create harmony in the workplace and drive cooperative collaboration among employees.

How to Develop Soft Skills

Soft skills are, in other words, people skills. They help employees react to situations and cope with challenges. Naturally, some people are introverts, while others are extroverts. This doesn’t mean that soft skills development is only for the socially confident. On the contrary, the right training can help even the most introverted workers to have more positive interactions.

Some important soft skills include:

• Communication
• Leadership
• Time-Management
• Teamwork
• Problem-Solving

Skills development can come in the form of mentorship or coaching. Team activities led by management can improve listening and communication amongst the team. Lead by example and offer regular feedback when developing soft skills.

Defining Hard Skills & Their Importance

Hard skills are the crucial knowledge and abilities employees require to carry out their jobs. Often referred to as technical skills, these are easy to quantify. We usually obtain hard skills through experience and education.

These skills are broad and depend on job requirements. An engineer will find a lot of a teacher’s hard skills irrelevant in their work. Obviously, these are vital to a job as they determine someone’s expertise and therefore responsibilities.

How to Develop Hard Skills

Not all hard skills are suitable across the team. Certain roles require specific training. Often these skills can be developed through training and practice and then tested to measure progress.

Some important hard skills include:

• Computer Programming
• Industry-Specific Certification
• Data Analysis
• Microsoft Office
• Languages

Job swaps or stretch assignments are an effective way to learn hard skills on the go. Online courses and webinars can be self-paced and teach new skills quickly. You may also find that some employees want to expand their knowledge and upskill beyond their role – invest in these people!

Balancing Your Skills Development

There should be a balance of soft and hard skills in your organization. An English teacher who knows everything about Shakespeare and perfects lesson plans is useless if they lack empathy and can’t listen to their students. Your employees require skills development in both departments.

Here are four steps to balancing skills development in your workplace.

1. Define objectives and outcomes – Start by defining what skills and behaviors you want to see in your employees. Determine how you’ll measure their development and performance. ensure these skills align with your company’s values and goals. If your main goal is to improve company culture, you’ll probably do more training around soft skills. if you’ve recently taken a more digital direction, technical skills will require upskilling.
2. Conduct a needs analysis – Identify any gaps or opportunities in your workforce. A needs analysis is a structured process of evaluating individual or team upskilling requirements. Remember that the ultimate goal is to improve company performance. Use surveys, interviews, performance reviews, and observations. This way you can understand what skills to prioritize.
3. Allocate time and resources – You’ll need to find a balance in the time and resources allocated to soft and hard skills development. This depends on your budget, employee workload, and program availability. Don’t bombard your employees with training when they’re already overwhelmed with tasks. If training is compulsory, adjust workloads accordingly. Receive feedback to guide how much time you assign to soft versus hard skills.
4. Evaluate the effectiveness – Once you conduct the training and allow your employees to integrate their learning into daily tasks, you can evaluate the effectiveness. Measure how well your teams are collaborating and communicating. Is teamwork lagging but individual technical knowledge increasing? Adjust training programs accordingly to balance it out.
   

Soft & Hard Skills Go Hand-In-Hand

While soft and hard skills are inherently different, they do complement each other. Senior technical abilities require good leadership skills to train others. SEO knowledge is best coupled with creativity.  Just the process of development requires both soft and hard skills. Upskilling can be stressful so employees need to be able to cope. Find the balance and watch your employees thrive as a team for the success of the company.