Most organizations recognize the value of ‘hard skills’ for their employees. That is, they tend to look for training or experience employees need to perform their jobs well. The best employees, however, bring a complete and well-rounded set of skills that enable them to perform their job at the highest level, while getting along well with managers, colleagues, and customers and helping to support the company’s overall culture and mission. These additional skills are known as ‘soft skills’.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills, sometimes called ‘emotional intelligence’ or ‘people skills’ refer to an employee’s ability to interact harmoniously with others. Soft skills are those personal attributes that can significantly impact interactions and communication with others. The majority of interactions your employees will have with others require some level of soft skills. Whether negotiating a new contract, communicating new ideas to colleagues, or bringing amicable resolutions to conflicts, the ongoing development of soft skills is critical for each employee’s success.
Conversely, a lack of soft skills can limit your staff’s potential, or even cause significant challenges for your organization. Given this, the development of strong communication, teamwork and leadership skills among your employees should be an integral part of your overall employee training and development program.
Soft Skills Training Modules for Corporate eLearning
As you evaluate and plan for employee development programs as part of your corporate eLearning objectives, some of the soft skill training modules to consider can include:
Communication
The development of high-quality communication skills is often seen as one of the most important soft skills for an employee. Effective communication through both the written and spoken word is necessary in most every workplace and industry.
Collaboration and Teamwork
To be successful, most employees must learn to work well within a team. And while some employees may thrive within a group, others might struggle to understand and work within the dynamics of a group. Proper training can be extremely valuable in guiding employees toward the development of this skill.
Time Management
An organization’s most productive employees tend to be the ones who learn to use their time wisely. Developing skills regarding the effective use of time, including prioritizing their workloads and eliminating distractions is highly valuable, especially for busy and growing companies.
Vendor Management
With outsourcing on the rise, effective vendor management is essential for most organizations. Employees who develop management and administrative skills are better able to work with vendors and ensure that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met and that these vendor relationships are managed with the company’s best interests in mind.
Leadership
To succeed, ever company needs great leaders and some of the most successful organizations recognize the potential for leadership in their employees and train them accordingly. Including leadership training as part of your soft skills training will help ensure that your future leaders are trained and ready when their time comes.
LMS Portals for Soft Skills Training
LMS Portals provides our corporate employees with a powerful platform to build and deliver their soft skills training modules as part of their overall eLearning and employee development program. Our system allows you to launch your own custom-branded eLearning portal and includes robust features for employee onboarding, messaging, analytics, knowledge management, and more.
Contact us today to get started for free!
Comments