As healthy company culture becomes increasingly important, hiring managers are taking soft skills directly into account when hiring and promoting employees. Soft skills (or interpersonal skills) are how you connect and build relationships with others, which is why they have become so important in the modern workplace. There are a multitude of interpersonal skills one needs to have in today’s work environment. Here are a few of some of the most essential ones.
Work ethic
This soft skill is not to be confused with overachieving, overworking, or losing your identity within your job. Instead, the value of work ethic is an umbrella for other important workplace personality traits, like teamwork, reliability, and honesty. An employee with a great work ethic keeps an eye on the parameters of their job. When there’s a deadline, they can be trusted to meet it – or communicate when they can’t (with an amended game plan ready to go, of course).
Communication
The modern workplace depends on the free flow of ideas, information, and instruction. This has always been true, but is even more so in a workplace altered by global economics, generational preferences and, of course, a pandemic. Communication is more than being able to talk to people, it also includes active listening. People want to be heard, they want to know you care about what they’re saying and that you understand them. Active listening is non-judgmental and listening without the intent to reply. To do that you have to truly listen without simply waiting for your turn to speak.
Initiative and creative risk taking
Companies suffer when no risks are taken. Thinking outside the box and coming up with new ideas and designs is important. In the future there will be even less room from sticking in the safe middle because humans are drawn to brands, concepts etc. that are confident and decide to lead.
Negotiation
Negotiation needs to be executed by humans because it consists of strong interpersonal skills and communication skills. You must be able to reach a decisions which makes all parties happy, even if there is compromise and you don’t get exactly what you set out to get.
Confidence
Finally, the beautiful bow atop every crucial workplace soft skill is confidence. In fact, confidence is the key to believing that you can build any (and every!) soft skill out there. Some confidence is inborn, but confidence can be built. In fact, there are proven methods to help you build your confidence from the ground up. Confidence will always ebb and flow – It’s simply a symptom of being human – but it can always be built, brick by brick.
With many businesses facing a shortage of strong talent, soft skills can set a great employee apart from a good one. Soft skills are more than just a buzz phrase. If hard skills, or technical skills, reflect what an employee does, then a soft skill, or non-technical skill, reflects how they do it.
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