6 Reasons Management Soft Skills Should Be Your Top Priority in the ‘New Normal’.

Soft skills make everything else work. Full stop.

For most of us working in the HR field, with so much change happening it’s hard to know what to focus on –upskilling/reskilling programs, shifting to agile working, writing hybrid working policies that fit everyone, figuring out how to measure wellbeing, improving our employee value proposition; and on top of this, motivating performance in ways that take all this into consideration. In the West our economies and societies are re-settling into a different shape and we’re shifting as fast as we can to adapt – welcome to the ‘new normal’.

Here’s the bottom line though: no matter what you choose to focus on, the soft skills of your managers are what will make it fly or fail. They’re the human face of your policies and company culture. They model what you’re about.

But here we have a problem. Management soft skills are essential in our modern business environment, but they’re lacking en masse. We know this because in recent years record numbers of employees have walked out of their jobs. Studies are showing that one of the great drivers of this movement was a common feeling of “I don’t particularly like my boss” (Professor Sir Carey Cooper CBE, founding president of the British Academy of Management, Oven Ready HR Podcast)

The key take-away here is that keeping the development of management soft skills front and centre is going to exponentially improve the effectiveness of any change you want to bring.

Drawing on some influential voices on the workplace environment, here are 5 more reasons why management soft skills are key to the success of all your future plans.

Hybrid Working

The emotional intelligence of you managers will affect how successful your hybrid working plans are:

“Organizations will need to understand what jobs and what talent is truly remote-able. People with different psychological ‘personas” will have widely varying preferences and abilities to work from anywhere. Some roles will need to be broken apart and remade as a set of tasks and competencies that can be performed virtually. Organizations will need to get creative about how work gets done. This might include shifting from synchronous to asynchronous work (where work doesn’t happen in meetings but independently on shared documents) or ensuring that employees on a particular task are all remote or all in person. Leaders that have the emotional intelligence to connect with people on different channels will be essential.” KornFerry, The Future of Work Trends 2022: A New Era of Humanity

A one-policy-fits-all approach isn’t working any more. A personal approach is necessary and for that, management interpersonal skills are essential above technical skills to connect with their diverse teams.

Is it possible to add in this CTA to the side of the blog right next to the quote above? [It takes training to understand different psychological personas. This is what we do. If you want our help to train your managers in how to do this, book a demo with one of our C-me team.

Reason Number 3: Upskilling/Reskilling your workforce

The Word Economic Forum published in 2020 that they believe 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025 (The Future of Jobs Report 2020) https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020/in-full/infographics-e4e69e4de7. Managers need to be confident mentors and coaches in order to ensure this happens swiftly. Also, to ensure you keep your best talent:

“A lack of career growth is one of the biggest reasons that people leave, second only to low pay. This means helping your leaders understand their role as coach and mentor, focusing on the development of their people.”

HR Zone and Sodexo – The Great Retention: Futureproofing your workforce by evolving your employee value proposition

https://www.hrzone.com/resources/the-great-retention-futureproofing-your-workforce-by-evolving-your-employee-value

Reason Number 4: Wellbeing

In a recent podcast Professor Sir Cary Cooper CBE explained the core importance of line manager soft skills in wellbeing:

“A wellbeing culture is not mindfulness at lunch. The main core parts of it are: do we have the right line managers (who have enough emotional intelligence) throughout the organisation, from shop floor to top floor? Do we have a long working hours’ culture? Do we have high levels of sickness absence and where and why? Do we have an EAP for people who are not coping? Are you looking at mental health? What is your support system like? https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/occupational-health-and-hr-working-together-prof-sir-cary-cooper-interview/

The only way to ensure your wellbeing policies are effective and meaningful is having line managers with the emotional intelligence to apply them and adapt them to each individual team member they lead.

As the face of your organisation to your employees, how your line managers show the importance of employee wellbeing is extremely important and not the sole job of HR.

“We’ve really got to get the whole organisation to understand that it’s not just HR’s job to solve, we all have responsibility over wellbeing. For many people in a big organisation their experience of that employer is going to be their own manager…If their own manager doesn’t see employee wellbeing as part of their success as an individual and a manager then we’re never going to get employee wellbeing right”. (Psychologist Gethin Nadin, one of the world’s top Employee Experience and Wellbeing influencers talking to Oven-Ready HR)

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/oven-ready-hr/what-is-employee-wellbeing-BSAloYVv-Uu/?t=1180

Reason Number 5: Engagement

“People don’t leave jobs they leave managers”. But why?

“In one of the largest studies of burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was “unfair treatment at work.” That was followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure.

Those five causes have one thing in common: your boss…

The real fix is this simple: better leaders in the workplace. Managers need to be better listeners, coaches and collaborators. Great managers help colleagues learn and grow, recognize their colleagues for doing great work, and make them truly feel cared about. In environments like this, workers thrive.” Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce 2022 Report https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace-2022-report.aspx

Reason Number 6: Company culture

Company culture is made up of the many little actions that occur every single day. Your managers’ abilities to have meaningful conversations with every member of their teams proves day-to-day that your values exist at every level of your organisation:

The past few years of turbulence, crisis and complexity will have dramatically affected your workplace and, in turn, your culture. Every small or large action you’ve taken in response to uncertainty and change will have sent messages to your employees as to what your culture is – and isn’t. For example, how you supported your people during the lockdowns sent cultural messages, how you managed and continue to manage hybrid working did so as well.

HR Zone and Sodexo – The Great Retention: Futureproofing your workforce by evolving your employee value proposition

https://www.hrzone.com/resources/the-great-retention-futureproofing-your-workforce-by-evolving-your-employee-value

SUMMARY

Are management soft skills on your agenda for learning and development this year?

Is there space for you to integrate training on soft skills into all your management training and development programs, and perhaps for every level of your organisation not just management.

Who in your organisation is able and willing to teach what they do and how they learned it?

Developing soft skills are what we specialise in. Perhaps you’re wondering how a psychometric profiling company can speak to soft skills? We use psychometric profiling data to help you understand how you and your team and everyone in your organisation is motivated and prefers working. We help teams understand each other, we help managers understand how to motivate each member of their team and how to successfully have the tough conversations when necessary. We help team members understand how to work with people completely different from themselves. We can actually do a lot with the data we gather - like speak in to how your C-suite team is functioning and also who your best next hire could be by understanding your organisation’s psychometric behavioural profiles. To find out more book a demo with one of our team.