Work performance
Today’s business world is more global and competitive than ever and so managers strive to monitor and assess their work performance to improve outcomes and achieve success. To increase work performance, they provide training and development programs. There is a tendency to focus on training programs for “hard skills” – professional certification programs directly related and relevant to the job function. However, this can cause a company to be task-oriented and rule-driven at the expense of soft skills, relationships, and initiative. Effective teamwork skills can lead to success and change for an organization. Project managers need to have good soft skills to affect the performance and success of a project. Thus, it is important to focus on, and provide training for, soft skills and more traditional ones. Employees need to demonstrate both hard and soft skills for increased work performance.
Conclusion
Although in the past work, performance and training methodologies have focused on hard skills, there is increasing evidence that developing soft skills such as communication, leadership, problem-solving, and relationship skills also leads to increased work performance and project and company success. For organizational success, the focus needs to move from simple knowledge acquisition to attitude and behavior change – for employees to use the training they receive and apply it in their daily job. For this to occur, the best style of training methodology would be time-spaced learning. A good training program and increased soft skills training will lead to increased work performance and ultimately organizational success.
