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Soft skills are down. Here’s how to build them back up.

Did you know that a whopping 83% of organizations face a skills gap in their workforce? That’s according to a recent survey from the Association for Talent Development, which also reported that 78% of employers said they expect to face skills-related issues in the future.

Did you know that a whopping 83% of organizations face a skills gap in their workforce? That’s according to a recent survey from the Association for Talent Development, which also reported that 78% of employers said they expect to face skills-related issues in the future.

You may be wondering what kind of skills these employers are missing. It’s widely reported that the U.S. workforce is lacking in tech skills, so I wondered if that’s what had the surveyed employers worried. As it turns out, the data revealed another concern entirely. According to ATD, employers are concerned about skills gaps in areas like leadership, critical thinking, problem solving and communication.

These capacities all belong to a family of abilities that employers like to refer to as soft skills. As the ATD report highlighted, employers are quite concerned about their workers’ abilities — or lack thereof — in this area. But there’s good reason to hope: Where soft skills are down, they can be built up. Below, I’ll answer three frequently asked questions concerning soft skills, including how organizations can upgrade their soft skills until they’re downright confident.

1. What are soft skills and why do they matter?

The Society for Human Resource Management defines soft skills this way: “They are behaviors, personality traits and work habits, such as collaboration, critical thinking, perseverance and communication, that help people prosper at work.”

It doesn’t take a ton of mental effort to see why soft skills matter. Like SHRM said, soft skills “help people prosper at work.” When workers lack soft skills, then, they languish. They suffer. And the business suffers.

Let me illustrate it like this. A worker may excel at certain hard skills: Let’s say she designs electrifying graphics for a company that sells leather boots. This worker, however, lacks certain soft skills. She struggles with creative feedback. She hesitates to ask important questions. And she hates working with her team.

Without these key abilities, this worker will be a nightmare to collaborate with, at best. At worst, she’ll hold up production, frustrate collaborators, and thwart sales.

What’s the lesson here? Soft skills matter. Big time.

2. How do I hire for soft skills?

There are two ways to hire for soft skills. The first is to ask candidates — and their job references — about their abilities. The second is to use a tool to assess their soft skills in real time. I’ll let you guess which is easier and more effective.

If you’re going with the first method, let me make a quick recommendation. Once you’ve pinpointed two or three skills that matter to you most, construct questions that prompt interviewees to illustrate their skill in action.

Here’s what I mean by that: Don’t ask an applicant if he’s a good communicator. Ask him to tell you how he handled an awkward situation at work. Prompt him to recall how he approached a lazy coworker. Listen for the details — they’ll let you know if the applicant is telling it like it is.

If you choose the second route — using a tool to assess applicants’ soft skills — I recommend selecting a tool that not only measures candidates’ confidence, flexibility and problem solving, but also selecting a solution that dives deep into workers’ behaviors. Such a tool will tell you where people will thrive in your organization, and why.

3. How do I improve my workers’ soft skills?

The only way to improve your workers’ soft skills is to benchmark where they are now. It’s no use trying to make progress if you can’t measure it.

Using tools like I described earlier, pinpoint the skills your organization struggles with as a whole. Then devise a plan: Brainstorm training, challenges and resources that will spur progress among your ranks.

If you’re looking for a tool that will identify the soft skills your employees need most, you can find it in PeopleBest. Our technology combines technology and psychology to drive organizations’ success through the most important asset they have: their people. To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies