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Technical skills are important to have in any industry, and they’re often reasonably straightforward to acquire, maintain, and improve with enough time and effort. Soft skills, however, are typically less tangible and can be more difficult to learn as a result.
Capabilities like leadership, communication, and conflict resolution have become vital skills in today’s workforce, especially given the rise of remote and distributed settings. As a result, companies seeking to cultivate high-performance teams will need to adapt to these new standards of success.
A Rising Need for Soft Skills
Many businesses today are identifying soft skills as the most significant contributor to gaps in teams over technical capabilities. Modern customers appreciate competent interactivity and responsiveness from businesses, making written and verbal communication skills, as well as emotional intelligence and leadership, all the more important in managerial and customer-facing roles.
Using Clarity to Build Career Pathways
One method of addressing these skill gaps is by developing structured career roadmaps and clear advancement criteria. When employees are able to clearly recognize the requirements they need to meet in order to advance their professional development and pay, they can do so with greater confidence and focus.
Hands-on opportunities like team lead roles can help in this regard, providing employees the chance to obtain supervisory experience under controlled yet realistic circumstances.
The Importance of Company Culture and Process
Clearly defining a company’s culture and processes is another useful and important way to give employees clearer goals to work toward. Training modules and other learning devices work well enough as a means of introducing ideas, but the most effective organizations are investing in processes like resource maps, standardized SOPs, and clear policies on continuing education.
By employing these policies, companies can craft environments that encourage collaboration and a motivation to pursue the advancement of their brand’s vision. Remote People, a global HR consultancy and recruitment firm that supports distributed teams, serves as a good example of this approach to employee development.
“I look to see what gaps we’re trying to solve for,” says Susan Snipes, Head of People at Remote People. “It’s always the less tangible things, leadership skills, communication, conflict resolution, that people come to me about. That’s where the real development work begins.”
Snipes explained that her experience in both nonprofit and startup environments shaped her belief that people development has to start before problems arise. “Unfortunately, a lot of times, companies are more reactive than proactive,” she said. “They come to me when it’s too late, like when an employee is already struggling or disengaged, instead of investing early in leadership and communication skills.” She believes the key to employee longevity is to build a system that supports growth at every level, even when the next role isn’t open yet.
Structure and clarity also play a huge role in keeping remote teams connected. “With people working in different time zones and locations, you have to standardize everything,” Snipes explained. “Employees should know where to go for resources, who to contact for training, and what they need to do to level up.”
A clear career roadmap and transparent advancement policy are signals that a company values its people. “Even if someone eventually leaves, you’ve still created a great place to work,” Snipes added. “They’ll go on to do great things, and it reflects well on where they came from.”
Why Engagement and Feedback Matter
Some companies are also adopting 360-degree review systems. These protocols allow for continuous feedback loops, giving employees regular opportunities to provide and receive feedback.
Snipes notes that these review systems should be expansive to incorporate more perspectives and provide more information overall. “They’re receiving the feedback from their supervisors and from their peers,” she explains, “and they’re giving feedback on their managers and on the company as a whole.”
This information matters since employees who are able to check in on their work at any given time tend to be more engaged with the task at hand, resulting in a culture of high performance.
Closing the Soft Skills Gap
For many employees entering the workforce, a compatible company culture is as valuable, if not more so, than their wages. Integrating soft skills training into a company’s culture allows that business to improve its employees’ performance, collaboration skills, and leadership capabilities, helping them grow personally and professionally.
As companies strive to build resilient and adaptive teams, investing in human-centered development strategies is likely to play an important role in keeping companies more competitive for longer.
