Soft Skills for Business Growth – 7 Ways to Propel Your Business Growth

Huge demand for soft skills training is arising in business fields. Soft skills are closely related to business growth in different ways, and no one ignores their contribution to the success of organizations. There is an article from BIG THINK, that discusses the necessity of soft skills. This article deals with the importance of soft skills for business growth and the seven reasons for encouraging soft skills in organizations.

Table of Content

• What is the Importance of Soft Skills for Business Growth?

• 7 Reasons Why Business Owners Should Encourage Soft Skill Courses in Their Organizations

1. Improved Communication:
2. Improved Critical Thinking:
3. Improved Collaboration: 
4. Strong Leadership:
5. Reduced Downtimes:
6. Improved Motivation at Workplace:
7. Improved Team Synergy and Reduced Attrition Ratio:

• An Important Tip for the Future:

• Conclusion

What is the Importance of Soft Skills for Business Growth?

It is generally observed that most business organizations focus on hard skills when it comes to hiring. Although these hard skills are important, soft skills for business growth mustn’t be ignored. After all, an employee can only express himself or herself well when he or she has soft skills. These soft skills enable them to work as a team, grow as an individual, and contribute to the success of the organization in a better way. You can refer to an earlier post on soft skills on Guruface to know the type of soft skills that help a person to grow inside and outside an organization.

It is said that over the years soft skills in people naturally declined. Nowadays, these skills are taught through several courses. However, many business organizations are reluctant to accept the importance of soft skills for their business. Needless to say, they may not favor soft skill courses, too. This post focuses on the importance of using soft skills for organizational growth and how soft skill courses prepare individuals for achieving organizations’ goals.

7 Reasons Why Business Owners Should Encourage Soft Skill Courses in Their Organizations

In 2018, LinkedIn has conducted a study across 100 leading cities in the US to map the soft skills gap in the country. At the end of the study, it declared that there is a huge gap of 1.4 million professionals with soft skills across industries. Many soft skills like communication, problem-solving, teamwork, critical thinking, time management, and stress management mean improved productivity within the organization. Thus, there are several benefits of encouraging your staff to improve their soft skills. These skills can be acquired on their own or they can take courses on soft skills.  Are you still confused? Perhaps, the following pointers may help you understand it better.

1. Improved Communication:

2. Improved Critical Thinking:

To understand the benefits of critical thinking, you need to understand what weak critical thinking skills mean. Let’s see these situations:

Bad decisions

Costly business errors

Failed systems

Repeated mistakes

Inaccurate assumptions

Loss of opportunities

Do you think your business can afford to lose in these areas? If no, then it is the time you must encourage your employees to find creative and critical solutions for issues. Cultivating soft skills in them will help them to weigh their options and think out of the box.

3. Improved Collaboration: 

According to Salesforce, 86% of executives and employees across business organizations cite lack of communication or collaboration as one of the reasons for workplace failures. Another study by Mckinsey suggests that 97% of executives and employees believe that lack of collaboration at a workplace can have a direct impact on the project outcomes. Improved collaboration enables employees to work toward common goals and objectives more efficiently.

4. Strong Leadership:

Imagine a scenario where employees and leaders are disconnected from each other. Firstly, this would lead to miscommunication, which would ultimately end up in a mess. It has been found that 27% of employees may want to leave an organization within the first year if they feel disconnected from the management. If you have employees with better communication skills, perhaps, they would be able to delegate work, communicate with you, accept feedback, and motivate themselves to achieve the target. Doesn’t that sound impressive?

5. Reduced Downtimes:

Today, every business understands the impact of going offline for a few hours. Although technology may be a reason for these downtimes, miscommunication or lack of human communication may also lead to this downtime. If employees are communicative, they will be proactive, too. They can quickly identify the problems and eliminate the barriers that are hampering goals, tasks, and projects. In short, they would be able to quickly find solutions to minimize these downtimes.

6. Improved Motivation at Workplace:

Today, many soft skill courses focus on building empathetic skills in learners. Can empathy be taught? Shouldn’t it come naturally? Yes, empathy can also be taught. According to a State of Workplace Empathy Study by Businessolver in 2020, the workplaces are less empathetic than before. Today, business leaders and employees are not doing much to show empathy. The study suggested that 68% of employees felt that their employers are empathetic, 48% of employees believed that their business organizations were overall empathetic. Almost 82% of employers who participated in the study suggested that improved empathy among employees has positive outcomes. How? Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and feelings.  When employees understand each other’s situation and try to find solutions together, they will build strong relationships. These relationships motivate them to stay longer in the organization and work productively.

7. Improved Team Synergy and Reduced Attrition Ratio:

 A report by Gusto suggests that 54% of employees have confirmed that a sense of community and collaboration keeps them together. Adding to this, another study by Forbes.com suggests that employees who collaborate regularly are likely to stick to their tasks 64% longer than their peers who do not collaborate. This type of collaboration would also mean high engagement and high success rates.

An Important Tip for the Future: In a few years, millennials will make up for the large section of the workforce. A study says that 33% of millennials wish to work for companies that are collaborative and support collaboration.

All these suggest, how team collaboration helps build strong team synergy and directly contributes to reduced attrition rates. To initiate this collaboration, businesses must focus on developing communication and collaboration skills in their employees. By having a powerful digital training platform for your business, you can ensure that your employees’ critical capabilities are getting polished and upgraded in regular intervals. Check out our 25 digital training platforms for businesses list to get started.

Conclusion

All these benefits suggest why soft skills are important for the business growth of any organization. However, hard skills should not be neglected. It is important to balance soft skills and hard skills equally to build a productive workforce. There are several hard skill and soft skill courses on Guruface that help organizations and people to improve their skills. These courses are hand-picked by our team based on the market demand. Delivered by leading industry experts, these courses are proven to prepare people for a job-ready career.