How to Identify Soft Skills Gaps with Training Needs Analysis

Soft skills are slowly becoming essential competencies that employers want in their employees. However, a vast majority of working professionals tend to have some (or many) soft skills gaps. The good news is that these skills gaps can easily be bridged with the right soft skills training. But before building training programs, businesses need to evaluate which soft skills their workforce lacks. This is why training efforts need to begin with a training needs analysis (TNA) as the first step. This article will show you how to identify soft skills gaps using TNA so your business can upskill its employees with highly relevant soft skills training.

Identify Soft Skills Gaps – Why is it Important?

According to the Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and Carnegie Foundation, technical skills only account for 15% of an employee’s job success. The rest of the 85% is determined by soft skills.

Soft skills include competencies that help us smoothly navigate our personal, social, and professional lives such as:

Verbal, written, and non-verbal communication skills
Interpersonal skills
Time management skills
Teamwork
Openness to feedback
Self-awareness
Problem-solving abilities and creative innovation
Leadership skills/a general ability to take initiative

While hard skills, or technical skills, impact the quality of work an employee can output, soft skills ensure consistency, collaboration, and long-term professional success. A workplace’s prosperity depends on whether its employees can keep up with its demands and work effectively with each other and with clients. Thus, identifying soft skills gaps is crucial for organizational training and development.

By filling these gaps, businesses are guaranteed to witness smoother operations, improved quality of work, and greater productivity.

Training Needs Analysis for Soft Skills Gaps

Training needs analysis is a detailed assessment of learners’ current knowledge or skill level in a particular training area. It also evaluates the effectiveness of existing training resources and the overall state of training in the organization. By doing so, TNA identifies the types and levels of training employees require to meet the business’ goals and performance expectations.

In other words, TNA identifies skills gaps and training needs in a business.

Naturally, then, TNA is the perfect tool for determining existing soft skills gaps. Through TNA, businesses are able to:

Identify areas where soft skills gaps exist
Identify areas where existing soft skills training is working (if any)
Find areas where there are soft skills training opportunities

TNA is a comprehensive process that requires collecting data at all levels of the organization. Without doing so, you will not be able to identify the most relevant skills gaps and training needs. Let us find out how to conduct TNA.

How to Conduct TNA for Soft Skills Gaps

1. Collect Data to Identify Training Gaps

To identify training needs, you need to first identify training gaps. This phase of the TNA process involves collecting as much data as possible from all levels of employees.

First start with senior management so that you have a clear understanding of business goals and how soft skills gaps affect them. Senior management will help you understand what they expect from employees, what they are satisfied with in terms of performance, the budget they can allocate for soft skills training, and the training areas they want L&D to prioritize.
After senior management, you can move on to middle management. This level of management will give you rich data in terms of employees’ performance and the most persistent soft skills gaps and training needs they have been able to identify. Since middle-level management directly supervises teams and departments, they will also help you understand which training efforts have proved successful and which ones need improvement.
Last, but not least, talk to the employees, i.e., your target learner group. Ask them about their experience with current training efforts, how effective it is, which aspects are ineffective, and whether they have been any soft skills training gaps.

To collect all this data, you can employ a variety of techniques, depending on time, budget, and sample sizes. Some common data collection methods used in TNA are:

Interviews
Focus groups
Performance and work reviews
Observation
Self-report questionnaires
Surveys

2. Analyze the Data

Once you have all the necessary information, you can start analyzing it. This analysis can be qualitative or quantitative, based on the data collection method you used. For instance, if you used a checklist to identify soft skills gaps, a quantitative tool will be the best option to find out which gaps were reported most frequently.

3. Start Building Training Programs Based on the Results

By this point, you will have reaped the benefits of TNA – namely, identifying soft skills gaps, identify training areas that work, and find training opportunities. You can then use these findings to build soft skills training programs for your organization’s soft skills gaps.

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How to Identify Soft Skills Gaps with Training Needs Analysis Infographics

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are soft skills?

Soft skills include competencies that help us smoothly navigate our personal, social, and professional lives such as:

Verbal, written, and non-verbal communication skills
Interpersonal skills
Time management skills
Teamwork
Openness to feedback
Self-awareness
Problem-solving abilities and creative innovation
Leadership skills/a general ability to take initiative

Why is training needs analysis important for soft skills training?

While hard skills, or technical skills, impact the quality of work an employee can output, soft skills ensure consistency, collaboration, and long-term professional success. A workplace’s prosperity depends on whether its employees can keep up with its demands and work effectively with each other and with clients. Thus, identifying soft skills gaps is crucial for organizational training and development.

How to use training needs analysis for soft skills training?

First, collect data from all levels of the organization. Then, analyze the data using quantitative and qualitative tools. Then, based on the results, you can start building soft skills training programs to fill soft skills gaps in your organization.