Corporate Learning Articles

In a surprising study, Google discovered that its highest performing teams aren’t those stacked with scientists, but interdisciplinary groups heavily benefitting from employees bringing strong soft skills to the collaborative process. Further, additional research found that it’s these soft skills, like good communication and empathetic leadership, not hard skills, that comprise the top predictors of success within the company.

Research from MIT Sloan echoed Google’s findings, showing that soft skills training, even in more hands-on, technical roles in a factory setting, can improve work productivity. Initiated at five Bangalore factories, a controlled, twelve-month trial revealed that training in problem solving, communication, and decision-making yielded a 250 percent ROI in eight months.

Time and time again, industry data, market trends, and insights from top business leaders highlight soft skills as important, and yet they’re still often overlooked.

A very elemental objective for every business is (or should be) increasing customer/user satisfaction while also decreasing costs. But this simple idea is not necessarily simple to achieve. If it were, more companies would be profitable and stay in business. For organizations whose products or outputs are the results of repetitive processes, implementing the Six Sigma method can mean the difference between barely making your margins and being hugely profitable, between failure and success. 

Corporate leaders identify Digital Transformation as a key priority for new skill development in their organizations. With emphasis on transformative change and the continuing need to develop new capabilities in every organization, where does superficial learning play a role, and where are organizations focusing on deep learning? What kinds of learning activities translate into truly transformative change to support business needs?

The rise of the digital economy means that jobs across all sectors are increasingly requiring digital literacy skills. Digital technology has been integrated into every part of the way we do business, from the tools we use to the products we make. While digital skills used to be held predominantly by professionals in technical capacities, it is now a common skill set necessary to navigate the professional world effectively.

With the rise of the digital economy and Industry 4.0, companies in every sector are gearing up to meet the demands of a quickly shifting technological playing field. Automation is rendering some jobs obsolete, while others never even conceived of 5 years ago are being created in the process. These deep changes raise big questions: How do humans add value in the workplace? What skills do companies need most? How do individuals keep learning to keep pace?