How to develop the soft skills of your team?

“You may have the necessary ability and knowledge to accomplish a task, but that does not necessarily mean that you will be able to achieve it.”

Gandhi

Was Ghandi an HR influencer ahead of his time? He certainly grasped the importance of human qualities, also called soft skills, in everything we undertake as human beings.

And precisely, a candidate with advanced technical skills but without emotional intelligence or the ability to work in a team is unlikely to bring value to their employer. According to one LinkedIn survey 92% of talent professionals and hiring managers said that soft skills matter as much or more in recruitment than hard skills.  89% say that bad hires typically lack the right soft skills. 

A Deloitte study states that ⅔ of jobs will be soft skill intensive by 2030 and companies could increase revenue by more than $90k. 

But how do you spot soft skills in a candidate? How can you objectively evaluate these skills instead of relying on your intuition? Here are some ideas to try out during your next job interview. 

Soft skills : What does it mean? 

Soft skills refer to personal and interpersonal qualities that allow individuals to work effectively with others. The topic of soft skills has already been explored by big tech names in the 1990’s, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. These companies conducted studies to investigate the benefits of certain soft skills in-house. Convinced of their value, they themselves developed workshops around soft skills for their employees. 

Soft skills are non-technical skills related to interactions, behaviour, and attitude. These skills can be cognitive, behavioural, or relational, depending on the field of activity. The most frequently mentioned soft skills in various industries are the 4C’s, the famous “21st-century skills”: creativity, cooperation, critical thinking, and communication. 

How to identify soft skills

It is not enough to memorise a list of soft skills. The recruiter’s challenge is to be able to detect soft skills by asking questions. You should discuss past professional experiences, use gamification or role-playing scenarios to help you identify how a candidate would act when on the job. 

Identifying soft skills during the interview

Human interaction is a very effective technique in highlighting an individual’s soft skills. During a job interview, you can evaluate the reactions and body language of your candidate. Thus, you will quickly notice if a person “understands quickly”, “thinks through a situation”, or “knows how to listen”. Review the resumé and ask the applicant to explain how they managed unexpected situations in their previous job or ask about their attitude towards teamwork, etc.

Here are some useful questions to probe the personal qualities of a junior applicant: 

Team spirit: A colleague is unable to complete a project on time. What do you do? Have you ever participated in a group project, and if so, what role did you play? 

Creativity: Do you have any artistic hobbies? Tell me about a time when you were creative? 

Communication: Tell me about a time when you and someone else didn’t understand each other. How did you get the discussion back on track? How would you give delicate feedback to a colleague or even a friend? 

Critical thinking: Explain an aspect that you would have liked to improve in a past experience and why. In the news, do you have an opinion that goes against the majority of people, and why? 

Ethics: What is something that you would absolutely refuse to do in a company, and why? Have you ever witnessed an injustice, and what did you do about it? 

Courage and resilience: Tell me about a time when you really pushed yourself. Have you ever persevered to succeed at something where you didn’t have a natural talent? 

Be careful though, as the interview can be a biassed exercise. Some candidates may make a good impression and then be very disappointed once in the job. Moreover, not all recruiters are trained to identify these types of skills. You may have heard or said "this candidate is pretty good", or that he or she "seems nice", or that he or she "seems motivated" without being able to detail your subjective impression. Equip yourself with a soft skills assessment grid to help you quickly identify the skills that will be needed for the job.

Psychometric tests to determine personality

You can test candidates (or your employees) on cognitive skills or personality. These assessments objectively identify behavioural tendencies. There are several types of tests: 

- Ability test: it assesses people on their actual intelligence and not on their work experience.

- Aptitude test: in the form of MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions), it helps to identify a person's potential to learn new skills for the position to be filled.

- Personality test: effective in assessing behaviour in a predefined situation and potential for successful integration into the company.

These exercises are interesting for picking up signals relating to certain skills such as curiosity, imagination, open-mindedness and problem solving.. 

End with a psycho-technical test to put the situation into perspective

A case study in the final phase of the recruitment process remains the most reliable way to identify the cognitive abilities of an individual in a professional context. Here are some typical questions that will help you to prepare for your future interviews: 

- You are a digital project manager in a large communications agency. You receive a call from one of your colleagues. An unhappy client demands to speak to you, because the project delivered does not correspond to the one originally approved. How do you react?

- One week ago you asked one of your accountant colleagues to provide you with a financial report on an event you organised a few months ago. It is one week later now and you have not received it. However, to allow you to prepare a new edition of the event, you need this report and you need it by the end of the month. What do you do?

- Your superior assigns you to an important and urgent project. But your workload is already at its peak and you cannot take this on right now. How do you react?

Our advice: propose to meet each candidate personally to give constructive feedback on the results of the test. This type of meeting can validate (or not) the soft skills of your interviewee. It is also a good opportunity to assess him/her in a real life setting.

These steps are essential, as it is impossible to reliably deduce a person's human qualities based on their CV or cover letter. It is easy to boast about being creative or curious on paper. But demonstrating it in a real situation is another story.

How to develop the soft skills of your employees?

Once in the company, it is equally important to preserve and enrich the soft skills of your employees. Mastering these skills creates a favourable internal atmosphere and an agile organisation. A study conducted by CSP Docendi shows that 48% of HR managers and executives in France consider soft skills to be "decisive" for collective performance, particularly in the context of company transformation. It is therefore necessary to integrate the development of soft skills into a global strategy. To do this, it will be necessary to assess the company's future needs in relation to the company's development objective. 

Developing skills through training schemes

When soft skills needs are defined, HR can implement different methods to train employees: 

- Organising training courses: internally, this benefits one or more employees. It takes the form of educational content, seminars or master classes with the aim of participants acquiring new knowledge or developing their human qualities.

- Peer Learning: peer-to-peer learning is so-called "social learning" based mainly on interactions with more professionally advanced employees. 

- Work Buddy: Implementing a work buddy system offers many benefits for a new recruit and is also valuable for your organisation. Your new employee has someone to talk to during their onboarding. He or she also gains knowledge from someone who is already on the job.  

- The professional co-development session: as part of the increase in soft skills, management can offer interviews or personality tests to define areas for improvement and identify employees' strengths. 

- Individual coaching: provides personalised support to employees to jumpstart their development. This gives them the keys to reach their professional goals and to evolve.

Offering these options to increase skills strengthens the employees' sense of belonging. They continuously develop their skills and refine their interpersonal skills, which increases their chances of advancing within the company.

Encourage training

• Training is still the best way to develop employees' behavioural skills. That said, those involved must find value in the training experience. It works best when the training request is a personal choice. Make sure you offer your employees training that is tailored to their profile, which will give them the opportunity to achieve their professional goals as well as those of the organisation. 
  
• For greater impact, why not create your own in-house training, if the budget allows?  This learning option will be created by the company with its internal resources, for the benefit of its employees only. Faced with environmental issues, the AXA Group has, for example, developed the "Climate School". Its aim is to train each employee in the challenges of the environmental transition, by means of nine chapters on the subject. The aim of this programme is to support employees in the sustainable transformation of their businesses.

Leadership training

To bring about any kind of change, you need leaders. Managers and decision-makers need to be exemplary figures in your company. This idea of exemplary leadership in learning is not new. In the 1960’s educational psychologist Albert Bandura introduced the concept of “vicarious learning”. His research suggested that people can learn new behaviour by observing and modelling the actions of others, particularly those who are seen as successful or “exemplary” leaders. 

It should be remembered that if the will to learn comes from the employee, management must also set an example. Their motivation to learn will in fact motivate their talents to do the same. What if the managers of tomorrow became real coaches? 

Developing soft skills means exponentially increasing the ability of employees to learn, think and interact within the company and in the service of its development. 

"Integrating behavioural skills into the recruitment process, but also throughout an employee's career in the company, guarantees that the company will remain agile. Digital transformation is moving very fast, and more and more technical skills are rapidly becoming obsolete. The key to innovation today is employees’ ability to adapt", explains Isabelle Bastide, President of PageGroup France. 

The digital transformation continues to shake up the professional landscape and soft skills remain a competitive advantage for every organisation. Being able to develop them internally is becoming a necessity rather than an option. There is no miracle technique for teaching soft skills. Rather, the solution lies in a multitude of initiatives repeated over time and implemented in all aspects of work.