What’s so hard about soft skills? I was fascinated to read an article in this month’s hashtag#AICD Company Director citing Deloitte research that analysed more than 9 million job advertisements, revealing that the most in-demand skills are human skills (previously known as soft skills). It went on to state that 97% of businesses require customer service skills, 71% of CEOs cited human capital as the leading source of business growth, 20% increase in productivity in workers with human skills training and a whopping $36b boost to GDP due to a more skilled and happier workforce. The article ended with this quote “By 2030 it is expected that two thirds of jobs in Australia will be human skill-intensive”. So my question is... if human skills such as interpersonal, social and emotional intelligence, creativity, listening and empathy, non-verbal communications and customer service skills are so important to future business success, why then do businesses spend $7.5b on recruitment and only $4.5b on formal training of these skills? Imagine if they flipped that, they might develop their valuable people and reduce the recruitment costs of a high churn rate, otherwise known as the revolving door. How hard can it be?
