National Soft Skills Association

To promote and enhance programs that increase soft skills

The Soft Skills Disconnect

By 372 Comments

Research conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research Center has all concluded that 85% of job success comes from having well‐developed soft and people skills, and only 15% of job success comes from technical skills and knowledge (hard skills). These statistics were extrapolated from A Study of Engineering Education, authored by Charles Riborg Mann and published in 1918 by the Carnegie Foundation. The cited figures come from the data on pages 106‐107.

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That is not a typo, it is correct—1918. So we have known for almost 100 years that soft skills are critical to the success of any organization. So why is it that in another study by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) The State of the Industry Report (Green and McGill, 2011), U.S. employers spent $171.5 billion on employee learning and development in 2010, and 27.6% of those training dollars went to soft skills training?

If soft skills are six times more important than hard skills for job success, why is almost ¾ of all the training dollars going to hard skills?

social-skills-disconnect-infographic

About the Author

National Soft Skills Association™ (NSSA) is a national clearing house on past and present research and to identify the best practices within the soft skills field.

Comments

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Trackbacks

  29. […] has long touted the importance of people skills in any successful business plan. In fact, a 2016 Harvard University study used figures from 1918 that found 85% of job success comes from people skills, a set of behaviors […]

    Reply

  47. […] According to a study conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation, and Stanford Research…, a whopping 85% of job performance comes from having soft skills, and only 15% from technical skills. We’ve known for over a hundred years that qualities such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and communication are essential for succeeding in a key role, and yet, if we look at the statistics, there is a major disconnect between the resources that go into hard skills and soft skills training. […]

    Reply

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