BY GARY WEINSTEIN
TALENT
MANAGEMENT
Soft skills are essential to the development of all employees and raising their productivity, and a differentiator when identifying the potential of individuals to be fast-tracked as part of a talent management programme.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the United Kingdom defines Talent Management as “the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention and deployment of those individuals who are of particular value to an organisation, either in view of their ‘high potential’ for the future or because they are fulfilling business/operation-critical roles.”
They go on to point out that “many organisations are also now broadening their definitions, looking at the ‘talents’ of all their staff and working on ways to develop their strengths. At its broadest, then, the term ‘talent’ may be used to encompass the entire workforce of an organisation.”
This broadening is good news, and in this article I will look at why it is important to focus on developing soft skills for young employees early in their careers, and the impact this will have for strengthening UK and European workforces.
In January 2015 a report was published by McDonald’s into the value of soft skills to the UK economy that was backed by companies including Tesco, and supported by organisations such as Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and CIPD. To quote the report summary “we know that as a nation we are not investing enough in skills such as communication, teamwork and time management, and now we have the stats to back this up.”
During the new UK parliamentary term (i.e. 5 years):
• By 2020, more than 535,000 UK workers will be significantly held back by a lack of soft skills – an issue forecast to affect all sectors.
• 97% of UK employers believe soft skills are important to their current business success, and over 50% say skills like communication and teamwork are more important than traditional academic results. However, 75% believe there is already a soft skills gap in the UK workforce.
• UK employees say they struggle to sell their soft skills. 1 in 5 would not feel confident describing their soft skills to an employer and more than half (54%) have never included soft skills on their CV.
AND THE
IMPORTANCE
OF SOFT SKILLS