Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Ideas Matter

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Behavioral Economics
    • Environment and Climate Change
    • Macroeconomics and Finance
    • Microeconomics and Competitiveness
    • Politics and Institutions
    • Social Issues
  • Authors
  • Spanish

Soft Skills Are, in Fact, Hard Skills

May 5, 2017 by Autor invitado Leave a Comment


By Pablo Bachelet*

I have two sons. One majored in history. The other graduated with a degree in Spanish and French literature. Despite my urgings – or maybe because of them – neither opted to study something scientific or mathematical, the so-called STEM fields that underpin modern economies.

Should I worry? Every parent wants their child to be happy doing what they like. Yes, as long as it pays the bills.

This is also one of the big development challenges for governments: what policies are most effective at helping people acquire the skills they need in a world that will surely include more robots, more creativity, and innovations that we can’t yet fathom.

This issue is cut and diced in our upcoming 2017 flagship publication, Development in the Americas,  titled Learning Better: Public Policy for Skills Development (you can register to receive book updates and a PDF copy when it is released).

As our researchers were putting the book together, we asked subscribers to IDB blogs five questions related to skills development, from what government policies they thought worked best to their thoughts on the quality of the education their sons and daughters were receiving.

We also asked about skills most demanded by employers.

Several employers responded that technical skills were, indeed, important. But many pointed to the ability to work in teams, and socioemotional skills such as empathy. In fact, 23 out of 187 responders mentioned communications as a critical workplace skill.

“The skills required by companies are ever changing as technology advances,” said Jaime Zavala, who has 30 years of experience in the public sector and works for the Chilean government’s training agency, known as SENCE. “The skills that don’t change are the so-called soft skills.”

“I’m a teacher and the required skills are analytical ability, the power to synthesize, communication, and empathy,” said Jorge Edilberto Zegarra. “Robots will have a hard time acquiring these skills.”

Of course, most folks already understand this, either intuitively or through experience. However, it is worth underscoring how big a change this is. I doubt that, at the height of the industrial revolution when many labored at assembly lines, bosses were looking for employees who could convey complex ideas to their co-workers.

Diana Senior Roca, of the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce in Colombia, said in our questionnaire that the Chamber did its own survey of 220 firms to identify the skills gaps. “Without a doubt, the bottleneck is not in the number of persons available in the labor market,” Senior said. “Rather, it is the lack of skills, and especially soft skills, for the core functions of companies.” The Chamber, she added, was working with local authorities to have schools focus more on those skills at an early age.

The question is, what public policies serve best to help people develop soft skills. This is a key theme of our upcoming book. The book takes a broad view by looking at skills acquisition throughout a person’s lifecycle, from birth to adulthood. One chapter analyzes the effectiveness of policies that develop skills outside the educational systems, such as work training programs. It will be required reading for all who look to implement public policies that ensure citizens can cope with a dynamic world.

Here’s an advance nugget from the chapter. The wage growth for a worker with a university degree, employed in a high-productivity firm in the formal economy, is three times faster than for a peer without a university degree, and employed in a low-productivity firm in the informal economy.

Maybe it is less about what one can do and more about how one can better learn to do new things.

“Many jobs require specific skills or technical knowledge,” said Mariela Oppici of Argentina, a workplace labor specialist and ontological coach. “At the same time, it is increasingly more important to have people with good communications skills, who are flexible, who can adapt to change, who are proactive, and can work in a team. This goes hand in hand with important values, such as the ability to compromise, responsibility and trust. Much of this can be encouraged in schools, but you also need to involve families and young people need safe spaces.”

Back to my kids, so should I worry that they have not undertaken a technical or scientific career? Happily, they are finding their own path. One is doing a postgraduate degree in public policy and the other teaches. But, as a parent, it is hard to know if we transmitted skills that will carry them through the next four decades. Governments have to do their part, and our upcoming book, Learning Better, provides policymakers with the tools to do so.

*Pablo Bachelet is Communications principal specialist at the IDB. Before joining the IDB in 2008, he worked as a journalist for almost 20 years, focusing mainly in corporate and economic affairs for different international publications. At the IDB, he works on issues related to macroeconomics, citizen security, strengthening state institutional capacities, the environment, integrity, and press, among others.


Filed Under: #Skills, Social Issues Tagged With: #communication, #education, #empathy, #publicpolicy, #skills

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Related posts

  • When Children’s Skills Predict Their Adult Earnings
  • Catching Up on Skills for the Labor Market
  • Boosting Education in an Unpredictable Century
  • When Information on Higher Education Narrows the Skills Gap
  • Adjusting to Shocks to Protect the Region’s Future

About this blog

The blog of the IDB's Research Department shares ideas that matter on public policy and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube
    This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser.
    To learn more about cookies, click here
    X
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT