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5 Soft Skills your Learners Will Need in 2018, and How to Teach Them 

Perhaps you’ve heard of “jobpocalypse”, or the idea that humans will become obsolete by 2040 and, consequently, be jobless. We’re here to tell you that isn’t true. As a learning company, we know that technology doesn’t make human unnecessary; it just makes us more efficient. 

Soft skills, like those we outline below, are becoming even more valued than technology. Robots don’t have the ability to empathize, persuade, or manage, and we’ll continue to need humans with increasingly competitive “human” skills to drive the economy. 

According to CareerBuilder, 62 percent of employers rated soft skills as very important when assessing their hiring plans for 2017. But, the Wall Street Journal found that 89 percent of executives are having trouble finding employees who have soft skills. 

We’ve outlined some of the top “human”, or soft skills, your learners will need for 2018. 

1. Ability to learn quickly 

To compete with the bots, your learners will need to learn quickly. Teaching this as a soft skill may sound difficult, because people have different learning styles and abilities. However, you can use eLearning to walk your learners through scenarios that help them to develop faster learning habits. Consider a short course on notetaking skills, as writing by hand is proven to help people learn faster and retain information better. 

The delivery method and frequency of your training courses can also help your employees to learn quickly. Repeating information in microlearning courses can send signals to your learners’ brains that they need to retain that information. 

2. Stress resistance 

Because your learners have unique backgrounds, they may not always know how to deal with stress in a constructive way. Stress is a major contributor to work burnout and demotivation, as well as poor health, which can lead to more sick days and employees who’ve generally “checked out”. Teaching them effective stress coping mechanisms will make them happier and healthier individuals at work and at home, which will positively impact focus and productivity.  

3. Marketing and sales 

While this skill seems tailored to your marketing and sales departments, the ability for all employees to market and sell your products, even in casual conversation, is extremely helpful. Everyone from your customer service team to your distribution partners can benefit from a course on marketing and sales techniques. Everyone in your company should know and be able to communicate the features of your products and services. 

Here’s where soft skills really need to be customized, rather than off-the-shelf. Your learners would best benefit from marketing and sales training that is customized to your product and your culture. You can even empower your sales and marketing departments to help design the curriculum for the training.

4. Dynamic communication 

What soft skills list would be complete without the most crucial skill of all: communication. Sure, robots can communicate with each other, but they can’t use dynamic communication (listening, processing, empathizing, etc.) to maintain professional relationships and accomplish tasks as a team. 

A new study from Boston College, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan, found that communication skills deliver a 250 percent return on investment based on higher productivity and retention.

To come up with new products, your employees must be able to communicate their ideas across teams. Create and communicate a culture where all ideas are welcomed and where communication thrives through customized eLearning. 

5. Problem solving 

Your employees need problem solving skills to identify processes that need fixed and conflicts that require resolution. They need to be able to think critically about an issue and use business sense to find the best solution. Help them to see problems in actionable steps, beginning with identifying the problem and working through solution planning and resolution. 

You can train them to be better problem solvers by creating a gamified eLearning course that takes them on a problem-solving journey.

Call us, today, to learn more about how our custom eLearning can help your employees master soft skills that will protect their jobs and aid them in their careers.

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