The Cost of Human Skills (or lack of them)

Many organisations are finding themselves smack-bang in the middle of the biggest shift in workplace dynamics in the past 100 years. The rehumanisation of the workplace is now in full swing.

But in the pursuit to bring humanity back to work, a gap exists. For most organisations, their management/leadership layer possesses a distinct gap between their technical skills and their human skills.

The technical skills are well known to us; the tangible components and tasks in our work days. It might be putting together a spreadsheet, writing a report, balancing a budget or driving a forklift. In the past, this has been where most learning and development centered upon.

The human skills on the other hand are the people to people interactions that exist in the workplace. Conversations with staff, customers or the board; perhaps it is motivating or inspiring staff to achieve, or how to ‘sell’ your product, policy or service. At present this is where the efforts of forward thinking organisations are trying to move towards, but many lag behind.

The fact remains: it is simple to measure the technical skills, and that’s why most organisations still focus much of their effort into this space. It’s easy to identify if someone can drive a forklift or not! 

But if you think human skills development aren’t a return on investment, think again. Or should we say, think differently.

One of our clients referred to us just last week, that after using elements of one our programs “Dealing with the Tough Stuff” and putting the human skills into work, he estimated he saved close to $50,000 based on that one conversation. This kind of feedback is the norm rather than the exception.

Now we don’t know about you, but right there is an open-and-shut case on why closing the gap between technical skills development and human skills development is essential for any high-performing workplace.

We will leave you with these two questions;

1. “Do the leaders and managers within our organisation have well-developed human skills?”

2. “If not, what is that costing us?”

Warm wishes, 

Darren & Alison

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THE GIFT:  Is your workforce...?

This weeks gift is a sensational video from Genos International asking the right quesitons about your workforce.  Do you ask the right questions of your organisation?  Do you know the statistics, trends thoughts and feeling are on managers, internal conflicts, opportunity and their costs or benefits to your organisation?  Take a look here