India Employer Forum

Human Capital

The Importance Of Human Skills In Your Business

  • By: India Employer Forum
  • Date: 16 March 2020

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Human skills is one of the essential ingredients for India’s economic growth. The market essentially needs vocational skilled manpower to convert growth opportunities into stable job incomes. With innumerable job seekers entering the job market year on year, human skills development is India’s top priority that needs to be addressed on an urgent basis. As a result, major Indian corporations and also educational institutions are putting in a lot of time and capital for its future growth as the country will then be transformed into an internationally-competitive  economy.

Smart employers these days are on the lookout for intelligent minds likewise. In recent times, with the fast moving world, candidates are selected from college fairs, social profiles and other apps like the career portal page. Book knowledge isn’t the only criteria to hire employees these days. Being the smartest person in your class isn’t sufficient. Having soft skills or human skills is also of utmost importance in the workplace to communicate with people from all walks of life.

You might also be interested to read: How To Develop Soft Skills In The Workplace

Management skills are particular qualities possessed by an individual to fulfil certain responsibilities in an organization. These attributes include the ability to solve a problem in critical situations and quick thinking in case of emergencies. These skills are useful to the manager to communicate with their co-workers, allowing a streamlined workflow in the organization. For the success of any organization, effective management skills are essential so as to achieve and excel in their objectives thus driving the mission and the goals of the business. Leadership or management skills are equivalent as they both require decision-making abilities, time management, planning and problem-solving.

In order to address the lack of skilled workforce, the Indian traditional education structure needs to be changed and improvised to create opportunities for those skilled workers too. Although knowledge is gained in academic institutions, the human skills required in the workplace has left a huge vacuum in the job market. In order to fill this void, the Indian industry, through its advanced technology interventions, are now implementing up-skilling training alongside the academic studies.This includes a high emphasis on the development of human skills in management.

Human skills in management

Managers who are capable of working well with people use their interpersonal skills that are essential to lead people. Communication and interpersonal skills help the business grow and achieve the team’s goals.

Managerial skills involve communicating with others and giving the required attention to build relationships. These human skills are important for managers to provide the necessary motivation to their employees. While human skills are important, a manager cannot function solely based on these. Conceptual and technical skills are also equally important. 

Conceptual skills  involve the use of intellectual ideas to form informative and important business initiatives.  Familiarizing oneself with conceptual skills helps managers efficiently knock out the tasks by figuring out the strategies that align with the end goals of the organization. The ability to add creativity and understand abstract ideas is essential to managers who have conceptual skills.

You might also be interested to read: Employers Must Ensure Workplace Skills Are Rewarded Equally For Optimum Productivity

Human relations in the workplace

Relationships between management and employees are of great importance in any workplace. 

The process of training employees, figuring out their needs, encouraging a healthy workplace culture and resolving conflicts between different employees or between employees and management is all a part of human relations in the workplace. Human relations can have an affect on the costs and sustainability of the business.

Managers these days realize the need to have good interpersonal skills even with the widespread use of instant messaging. This is because it is necessary to possess verbal and social skills to conduct business diplomatically and effectively with your subordinates as well as the superiors.

Establishing relations in the workplace with exceptional interpersonal skills help in greatly motivating the employees and establish loyalty to the organization. It also promotes teamwork and greatly influences engagement and performance of the employees. Great interpersonal skills are what sets you and your organization a class apart in the corporate world.

The management is responsible to maintain good relations with the rest of the staff. The onus of a healthy work environment is placed on the management and a poor relation ends up hurting the employees as well as the management equally. It is of utmost importance to therefore focus on people management skills and building healthy relationships in the workplace. A good relationship with the members of your team helps in not only increasing productivity but also act as an assertive motivator.

There is a significant gap in skill development in India, as a result this gap needs to be bridged for us to remain competitive in the present global market. The whole objective of this study is that despite a vibrant and abundant young Indian population, one needs to provide clear recommendations to major organizations and training institutes about opportunities in bridging the skill gap.

Recently, corporates have made it mandatory to train the trained employees with corporate management skills.  With all the latest technologies and new ideas globally, one needs to stay updated with the ongoing trends and  methodologies. As a result, training programs, either for a specific department or if needed for the entire workforce, is organized to attain conceptual skills in management. These training modules have become imperative for the growth in the industry.

Educated but yet unemployed is a common cry for most Indian youth today.  Hence, it is clearly visible that in order to bridge this gap one needs to combine education with professional skills thus boosting the younger generation for a better future.

References:

  • “Skill development: need of the hour, will be the defining element in India’s growth story.” -The Economic Times article published on April 29, 2014
  • “India must invest in education, human skills to be among top 3 economies: Experts” article from The Economic Times on 3rd August, 2019

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