Which of the following skills helps make your company more profitable? Which of these skills is essential to your career progression?
- Communication skills
- Team-work skills
- Decision-making skills
- Time management skills
Qualitatively, most of us would select at least one of these skills as being important to our company’s financial success as well as to our own. Increasingly, companies are focusing on quantifying the extent to which these soft skills add economic value to their enterprise.
On behalf of McDonald’s Corporation, a major employer in the United Kingdom, the firm Development Economics (https://developmenteconomics.co.uk/) prepared and published a report on “The Value of Soft Skills to the UK Economy.” An important objective of this research was to confirm and quantify the economic benefits of soft skills such as those McDonald’s considers core to its business success and which are included in its well-developed employee assessment tools and training systems. Results from this research include:
- The value of the contribution of soft skills to the UK economy is worth approximately US$111 billion annually (close to 7% of the total UK economy as a whole)
- By 2020, the annual contribution of soft skills is expected to grow to US$137 billion; by 2025, the value is projected to be US$160 billion.
- By 2020, deficits in employee soft skills are expected to hold back the advancement of as many as 535,000 UK workers (close to 2% of current number employed in UK labor market).
- In 2020, loss of production due to employee soft skills deficits is estimated to be US$11 billion.
The report prepared by Development Economics is comprehensive, quantitative, and well worth reading. Such attention to quantification of the economic impact of soft skills is timely (perhaps just-in-time!) as concerns increase about the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on employment options in the future, particularly in high tech. “High touch” job opportunities will continue to thrive and grow, especially in those companies whose competitive differentiation depends on excelling in delivering exceptional customer service experiences.
Reference:
See also:
https://developmenteconomics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/McDonaldsReport-FINAL-1.pdf
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