AIM CEO Ben Foote discusses the increasing importance of soft skills on Sky News Business
The Australian Institute of Management’s (AIM) CEO, Ben Foote, was interviewed recently on Sky News business programme “The Ladder” to discuss the lack of soft skills among Australian employees and why it’s crucial for businesses to start investing in training.
This discussion followed a survey conducted by Deloitte Access Economics, revealing that soft-skill intensive occupations are expected to account for 63% of all jobs in Australia by 2030.
“There is a huge weight on Australian businesses to upskill people and prepare them for the future, explains Ben Foote. The education market has partially let businesses down. It has been really good at teaching technical skills, but with the increasing rate of change, people now need significant help with developing soft skills”, which encompass leadership, communication, social intelligence or emotional intelligence competencies…
“Luckily, the education market is coming up with exciting solutions to help. For example, LinkedIn's learning platform provides a subscription to customers. All the employees [from the organisation that subscribes to the service] can benefit from online courses and learn lots of things at a pretty reasonable cost. That’s a brilliant solution. At AIM, we applied that same model to face-to-face learning and created [AIM Access], a subscription for businesses across the country. Again, one monthly fee means every person in an organisation can learn all of these essential skills.”
“There are solutions out there which businesses can plug into to create highly engaged people who feel much more capable of doing their jobs in a fast-changing environment and much less likely to leave. The long-term benefit for those companies of investing now is much greater than the actual cost to implement in the immediate term.”
Learn more about AIM’s short courses, including over 20 soft skills courses (Leading with Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness – Raise Your Leadership Effectiveness, The Power of Influence, etc).
Find out more about AIM Access, which offers a subscription to personalised development with AIM face-to-face short courses.