What if we say that soft skills (or human skills) are more important than hard skills? Due to a tough competitive labor market and new technological innovations, the demand for hard skills is so high that soft skills are discarded and underestimated.
Today, personal qualities are becoming increasingly important as companies recognize their value and how they affect business performance. Successful negotiations, building effective teamwork, and managing conflict situations help Teams develop and companies succeed.
Currently, in the midst of a pandemic crisis and ongoing telecommuting, soft skills are essential to ensure productive collaboration, smooth communication and excellent self-management. But the question is: how can soft skills be most effectively developed?
We’ve been in your shoes and we know how scary it can be to choose the most appropriate strategy for developing soft skills. In this blog post, we share new approaches and traditional methods for training employees and developing professionals with strong socio-emotional skills.
Virtual reality immerses employees in real-life situations
VR training is one of the most popular ways to develop soft skills today and matures every year. Using such skills with VR allows people to experience a strong immersion in a realistic and unique environment that cannot be created with traditional strategies.
The main idea of VR training is to give employees the opportunity to practice in real situations without fear of mistakes and without drawing conclusions. But at the same time analyze the results of different approaches and work on their mistakes. So how can VR be effective in training employees in soft skills? These are the main benefits:
A safe learning environment. When employees feel safe in training, they are open to experimentation and not afraid. In addition, after VR training, people are 275% more confident in applying their knowledge in real life. Better concentration. It should be noted that VR-trained employees focus 1.5 times more on their job than their colleagues who walk other paths. Because students use VR headsets, they are fully involved in the virtual landscape and are not disturbed by external factors.
Convenient monitoring of sea ores. Using VR approaches to collecting behavioral data, you can measure your return on investment and track the progress of each employee’s soft skills. This technology helps companies identify skills shortages from employees and find the most appropriate ways to maintain and improve them. Faster training. Virtual reality training can save time by improving soft skills. VR students study four times faster than their classmates. Lower costs. Using VR training in a company can lower the cost of developing soft skills in the long run. You place VR headsets once and use them for different employees. VR training can be divided into different categories that meet specific training requirements:
Blended learning focuses on different requirements for soft skills
In the development of soft skills in companies, blended learning is considered to be one of the most practical methods with impressive results. In short, it is a balanced combination of self-practice, on-site and web-based training. The following is a detailed list of elements of blended learning:
In the world of working conditions and roles, soft skills are one of the few constants. They are more critical than ever today because companies need to remain productive and competitive. Respectful relationships, effective communication, creativity, and social resilience are key to a successful and professional organization. And all of the above can be achieved with the right techniques to develop soft skills.
This article discusses the development of best practices, which we find others most useful. Our team is convinced that hard and soft skills need to be developed at an equally high level. Therefore, we recommend integrating employee competency training into the professional development plans of your team members to improve inclusion, adaptability, and creative thinking.