The Future of Work encompasses many characteristics. However, attributes like communication, collaboration, and community contribute greatly to enterprise success. There is an elicited sense of interconnectedness between leaders and their workforce and among employees themselves. At the heart of those dynamics is soft skills that help drive workforce interactions and business outcomes. In today’s world where artificial intelligence permeates nearly every area of the workplace, AI is coming into its own as a tool to enhance soft skill development.
Think soft skills are only a recent workforce concentration? Not quite. In 1918, the Carnegie Foundation published Charles Riborg Mann’s A Study of Engineering Education, which cited that 85% of a person’s job success is a product of soft skills and that only 15% of success is based on technical knowledge. Even more than 100 years ago, the criticality of workplace soft skills was being emphasized. However, the pandemic helped bring soft skills into sharper focus as other Future of Work elements (e.g., flexibility, remote work, empathetic leadership) became mainstream concepts and areas of importance.
Now with artificial intelligence leading the way in technology utilization, enterprises have an opportunity to leverage AI for greater workforce enablement — particularly around soft skills.
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