Soft skills: what are they?

Employers used to prioritise technical skills in the hiring process, but increasingly they are taking into account soft skills. Soft skills are the human qualities, the behavioural skills that distinguish any employee from a high performer: customer relations, empathy, self-confidence...

The challenge of soft skills

Businesses evolve with technology and employees have to adapt. This leads companies to invest regularly in in-house training programmes to keep up with the changes and enable their employees to keep pace.

Traditionally, on-the-job training has focused on the technical aspect alone, i.e. on strengthening technical skills. However, this approach suffers from a major shortcoming: it does not include so-called "behavioural" skills. These refer to qualities and personality traits that are innate or acquired through training or experience.

Soft skills cover a wide range of competencies such as self-knowledge, stress management, empathy and reflexivity. In a professional world where it is necessary to communicate, to listen and to understand others, these qualities are as decisive as technical skills. Furthermore, in small and medium-sized organisations with little hierarchical scope, employees must be autonomous, empowered and capable of taking initiatives. The soft skills are therefore fully relevant in a digital world where technical skills are becoming increasingly obsolete.

Developing employees' soft skills to support your company's overall performance requires a well thought-out strategy adapted to your context. The Fifty platform delivers soft skills training actions aimed at encouraging individuals to change their behaviour or adopt certain choices in a work situation. These daily actions recommend the right action, at the right time, to each employee, without constraint or sanction.

The Fifty approach

Purely technical training for employees is not enough to meet the company's expectations of efficiency and performance. The Fifty tool seeks to fill this gap by providing training soft skills designed to help your employees progress in their professional environment, thanks to eDoing.

Fifty uses the Nudge educational approach, theorised by 2017 Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler. In practice, our platform encourages individuals to follow a series of targeted actions with no constraints or obligations, allowing them to improve their behavioural skills over time.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, employees are taken care of individually in their specific problems. For example: micro-actions on emotional intelligence to manage stress, targeted communication actions to learn to speak in public, etc. The AI draws up a list of actions to be taken based on the analysis of the subject's profile.

Fifty can be implemented in your business, in your context, and the customised actions are measurable on all business profiles: from Management to Sales to Productivity. Contact us for more information.