Soft skills are critical for success

• By Dr. Lisa Riegel
• August 7, 2023
• No Comment

Academic and technical skills are considered the necessary preparation for one’s future job, but what about soft skills? When we don’t teach and assess them, we are not truly preparing tomorrow’s workforce and we are setting people up for failure. Soft skills are critical for success.

Consider these facts: 

• 89 % of recruiters say when a hire doesn’t work out, it usually comes down to a lack of soft skills.
• Poor soft skills create toxic work environments and each toxic employee adds $25,600 to turnover costs and incalculable opportunity costs. 
• Errors due to miscommunication cost businesses an average of $4200 per employee and 17 man hours per week are wasted clarifying previous communication. 
• Productivity costs due to disengagement costs 34% of the employees’ annual salary and poor soft skills are the number one reason for disengagement. 
• Soft skills impact customer satisfaction by ruining the customer experience. 

Industry specific soft skills

Each industry requires a unique set of soft skills. For example, finance departments need employees with impeccable self-management skills. Financial employees need to be detail oriented, consistent and organized. Advanced manufacturing technicians need innovation skills. To diagnose issues with machinery, they need strong information processing skills and creativity. Leaders need social engagement and communication skills. They also need to be able to take others’ perspectives and use strong persuasive communication skills.

JAKAPA can help

JAKAPA can help companies build skills profiles. In doing so, companies can better understand the critical skills that matter for their company culture and productivity. Businesses that have used JAKAPA remark that the data we provide is unique and has helped them better understand other data sets, such as absenteeism, retention and productivity. 

We can also help companies get a better return on investment for their training costs. For example, conflict resolution is a process that anyone can learn, but some people are better at that process. The underlying skills required to implement conflict management are perspective taking, optimism, persuasive communication, creativity, social warmth and others. JAKAPA measures, trains and tracks those skills. Companies can use us to identify the foundational skills they need to build in order to maximize the implementation of training.

Go to jakapa.com to learn how we can be a valuable tool to generate the unique and informative data you need to maximize your company’s success and engage your employees.

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At JAKAPA, we are passionate about developing soft skills and are excited to share more with you!

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