Addressing soft skill gaps in financial services

Employees who work in highly technical roles, like financial services, tend to put most of their focus on building and honing the practical skills they need to accomplish their day-to-day work. While sharpening these existing skills and learning new ones is critical, many professionals focus only on the hard skills, often forgetting about the softer, personal skills altogether. But while soft skills can seem more abstract and non-essential, they’re more important now than ever — for both individual employees and organizations as a whole.

From the ability to make critical, fast-paced decisions to communicating through industry-specific jargon, prioritizing soft skills can be the difference between a thriving financial services workplace and a struggling one.

What are soft skills, and why do they matter?

Soft skills are interpersonal abilities that enable effective interaction and performance in both professional and non-professional settings. Unlike hard skills — like analytics, forecasting, etc. — soft skills are more intangible and generally applicable across different roles and industries.

Despite this intangibility, some of the most essential soft skills in financial services include emotional intelligence, teamwork, creativity, judgment, and decision-making. Each of these competencies, which can be taught through the right training, help both individual employees and their organizations progress:

Individual success: Financial companies are increasingly seeking job candidates with soft skills instead of only technical or cognitive skills. This means the more that employees are adept at competencies like organization, teamwork, problem-solving, and communication, the more likely they are to both climb the ladder and ensure long-standing employability.

Company-wide success: When individual employees thrive, so do the companies that employ them. Mastery of soft skills across a workforce fosters effective collaboration and teamwork, drives innovation, and creates a workplace culture that employees want to be a part of. As companies become increasingly global, helping employees create human connections with colleagues and clients through skills like communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence, can give a financial services company a competitive edge.

Why do financial services companies struggle with soft skills?

Of course, developing employees’ soft skills is easier said than done, especially in highly technical organizations. 

When it comes to incorporating soft-skill-building in the workforce, organizations often struggle with:  

• Determining and communicating training results: Unlike hard skill proficiency, which can often be more easily measured through practical tests, exercises, and overall outputs, the mastery of soft skills can be harder to measure and understand — leading to both a lack of organizational and employee buy-in.
•  Finding the right training and resources: Many L&D platforms and content are outdated and don’t offer the comprehensive, hands-on training that soft-skill-building requires. Because learning soft skills often requires employees to change behaviors embedded within them, training has to be continuous — and many L&D programs are not.
• Building employee engagement: Technical employees tend to be very hands-on and outcome-focused, so building soft skills can often be seen as less critical to their role or career progression.

How to integrate soft skills development into the financial services industry 

To make soft-skill development a reality within the financial services sector, and nurture well-rounded employees who have both hard and soft skills, L&D should offer:

Diverse learning formats: Every employee has different learning preferences, so using a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Instead, L&D should offer diverse learning formats, like microlearning, immersive courses, podcasts, practice labs, and more on subjects like emotional intelligence, communication, and the like.

Relevant, curated content: As technology rapidly transforms and expectations change, financial services employees need updated, hyper-relevant content that speaks to the skill gaps within their specific industry. L&D should offer content that’s customized to speak to a variety of skills and roles, and curated to fit specific learning programs in order to enhance engagement and retention. In essence, employees should feel that the content they’re learning is relevant and tailor-made to their careers and everyday life. 

Mentoring and coaching: Building soft skills is an inherently social process, and real retention often requires face-to-face interactions and feedback. By establishing both formal and informal mentoring programs for employees to learn from their peers — with mentorship guidelines that outline expectations, meeting frequency, and goals for both technical and soft skills growth — employees can better retain and apply their learned new competencies. 

Experiential learning: Like mentoring and coaching, practical exercises involving soft skills can improve client interactions and team dynamics. For example, L&D programs should offer access to case studies or learning scenarios that are industry-specific. Likewise, cross-functional project collaborations can help to break down silos and improve communication and teamwork skills.

Assessment of results and success: To motivate employees to engage and get organizational buy-in, L&D programs should offer 360-degree feedback systems that evaluate both technical proficiency and soft skills. L&D teams can also measure the success of these professional development programs by informally discussing with employees and taking a “fly on the wall” approach to monitoring success. 

Continuous learning: No matter the soft skill training and upskilling your team wants to provide, ensure that it can fit within the flow of work so employees can learn and grow without having to completely remove themselves from their technical skill development and daily work. This might include encouraging self-directed learning, mobile-friendly programs, or using platforms that offer microlearning tools, like Blinkist, which is available through Go1 Premium Pro. 

Use Go1 to make learning soft skills simple and effective

Content aggregators like Go1 are one of the best ways to ensure organizational soft skill development is engaging, results-driven, and accessible to busy financial services employees.

With Go1, L&D teams can offer employees a library of world-class content that covers everything from communications to developing emotional intelligence, and even those technical skills your team needs as well.

Plus, with gamification tools, microlearning modules, and so much more, L&D teams can make the intangible tangible and create a work environment where everyone thrives.

Ready to see Go1 in action? Book a personalized demo to discover how our platform can

transform your L&D strategy today.