What are Soft Skills ? Why are they Important?

Soft skills are basic traits of a person’s skills and character which help them to use their hard skills to the full extent also known as people skills. The combinations of communication skills, creative skills, and all the skills which help a person to navigate their environment and interact with the people around them and work with them.

At the end of the day we, “humans” are social creatures which means that we interact with other human beings almost on a daily basis, and for effectively interacting with other humans we need to have a basic set of social skills inculcated within us. We all have basic needs, to satisfy those needs we need to have resources and for that a person has to work and earn money, for doing so one needs to achieve success in their respective career, and for achieving success and growing in one’s career people need those kinds of skills

In schools and colleges, we are taught hard skills like coding, accounting etc but for a person to really sustain in this dynamic environment and add value to the organization, these kinds of skills are very important. Talent along with the right kind of soft skills is like a match made in heaven but is very rare to find these days, the right soft skills provide an edge to the employee.

To undertake an opportunity and work on it one needs to have the right technical set along with soft skills like which will help an employee to bridge the gap between the adequate candidate to the ideal candidate.

In this world of dynamic environment and digitalization, the demand of technical skills has widened along with the need of the right attitude of people, compared to earlier times jobs have become more human centric and great emphasis is focused on critical thinking, problem-solving, adaptability, innovation, creativity and leadership.

Also, while hiring employees, HR professionals use situational questions and behavioural questions to identify the soft skills of the candidate to check whether he/she would be perfect fit for the respective workplace or not. If an organization is good at getting clients, but not good at retaining them or when an organization has lots of managers but no real leaders that is when we realize the real importance of having soft skills within an organization.

Soft skills are the need of the hour, and also the bare minimum necessity for a person to really excel, communicating with other employee and encouraging them to work and put up their best foot forward is important. Just like if an employee is not able to communicate a potential idea to the organization it may lead to limiting his own potential.

A productive work environment depends on the soft skills of the people working, the ability to interact, the ability to solve problems by inculcating creativity is what makes one achieve greater heights of success in one’s career.

The main important set of soft skills include:
1. Communication
2. Self-motivation
3. Creativity
4. Leadership
5. Responsibility
6. Team work
7. Decisiveness
8. Problem-solving
9. Flexibility

All these above-mentioned soft skills are also known as baselines which indicate their importance in a workplace.

Also, keeping in mind, the pandemic we are currently living in, the times are highly unpredictable, we might never know what a fellow employee might be going through, so this situation has made us realize the importance of dealing things with ambiguity, the most important skills one may perceive in these times is emotional skills.

We have highlighted the importance of soft skills, and we know that it is required at all levels, but still, we observe that it is rare among people which limits people in a way so that they aren’t able to convey their ideas and skills. Hard skills can be acquired through courses and also, they are taught in all the institutions, whereas soft skills are something that a person needs to learn by the method of experimentation, as dealing with humans is not straightforward, and requires efforts at every step which is why it is considered a difficult skill set to inherit.

Soft skills complement hard skills at every step, to bring out the best foot forward of an employee soft skill are important, like hard skills help us to understand a particular job but soft skills on the other hand help to grow within an organization.

In today’s world every day millions of job applications to different websites companies and other organizations are given out in order to seek employment opportunities from around the globe. Every company has its own hiring process but the common value they all are searching for is whether an applicant can be a long-term asset for the company or not, so in these times of rigorous competition, one should be able to stand out.

It is believed that every human has the same ability to do things and there is not one thing a person can’t do which their colleagues can, it’s all about how well a person has worked on his/her soft skills which make them not only stand out but also help to gain confidence which is treated as an invaluable trait in the business world today.

Even if we head back to basic, we are taught that the main problem of choices occurs due to alternative uses of resources and that happens as we have scare resources, which prevails till date and makes “problem-solving” a very important skill.

As we step into the future, the meaning of getting work done isn’t just limited to ticking all the boxes but a much wider concept than that, it’s about how you get things done along with the co-workers as a team, hard work is inevitably a key component, but smart work is equally important.

Soft skills are important for every business organization, irrespective of the volume.

Survival and growth are two things which provide direction to the organization, which can be achieved by building and maintaining meaningful business and personal relationships which in turn presents your organizations in a more positive way without being affected by any external issues and showcasing a promising future of the organization.

Increased productivity, improved teamwork, improved retention rate, improved employee satisfaction, improved leadership and end number of benefits are associated if we attach soft skills to any business, and on this note we should strive to bring about a positive change and inculcate soft skills to our traditional ways or work environment.