Every musician plays scales. When you begin to study the piano, that’s the first thing you learn, and you never stop playing scales. The finest concert pianists in the world still play scales. It’s a basic skill that can’t be allowed to get rusty.
Every baseball player practices batting. It’s the first thing you learn in Little League, and you never stop practicing. Every World Series game begins with batting practice. Basic skills must always remain sharp.
7.2 Competence The guidance shown on this page is relevant to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. Organizations should establish a process for assessing existing staff competencies against changing business needs and prevailing trends. Check for evidence that all staff which work under your organization’s control are competent, and that evidence continuing competence is maintained as documented information in accordance Clause 7.5. Maintain documented information such as a skills matrix; training records, personnel files, CVs, job descriptions.
Competency-based training programmes can vary greatly and are as unique as the facility and personnel working there. The distinct operations of the facility and the level of education, training, and experience of the personnel determine the necessary elements of a competency-based training programme. To establish and maintain a competency-based training programme, the following steps must be taken:
Identify competency-based training needs; Prepare the training materials; Conduct and evaluate the training. How does your organization determine the necessary competence of person(s) doing work under its control that affect its environmental, safety and quality performance? Ensure that those competencies are possessed by the people doing the work under your organization’s control including: the organization’s own personnel, contractors and outsourced personnel working either on site or off site.
Training alone is not sufficient to demonstrate competence; this must be demonstrated through tests, observations, results, etc. Auditors need to find objective evidence in order to determine that the competency requirements have been met.
If the people are found not to be competent, your organization is required to take action. The actions taken need to be evaluated for effectiveness in raising competence to the required level. Examples of action may include remedial training, recruitment or the use of external people in order to acquire the necessary competence.
Identification of employee training needs is typically the first step in developing a competency-based training programme. In addition to existing workers, new hires, temporary workers and outside contractors must be included when identifying training needs. Your organization must demonstrate that the training needs for these employees were identified.
Your organization should operate a comprehensive training programme. All employees should receive training as identified by an initial training needs assessment. The training requirements for employees must be assessed against wider organizational policies and objectives.
Line Managers and Supervisors often determine the training required for workers under their supervision to fill the gap in training, knowledge, competence and skills of each person and the training required to satisfy any applicable hazard and task specific competencies.
Where skill deficiencies are identified or when competencies expire, appropriate training, retraining and/or supervision must be provided before work commences or continues so that employees can perform their designated duties competently and without risk to health and safety. Gaps in training, knowledge or competence must be identified and filled.
Line Managers and Supervisors should monitor the abilities of all their workers, their responsibilities and ensure the ongoing monitoring and review of employee competencies. Appropriate training requirements can be further identified through this process using a Competency Review Form. Training needs are also determined during the appraisals process where any needs identified are derived from annual appraisals and personal development reviews.
The aim of the competence matrix is to support the Human Resources Manager and Line Managers to ensure that training is targeted, managed, effective and comprehensive. A suitable matrix should be produced for each workplace. After developing a list of these employees, the Management Representative or the Human Resources Manager should establish the appropriate training programme for each worker, based on the type of employee interaction with each significant impact or risk.
Other requirements for the position such as legislative requirements, including license requirements (e.g. radiation user’s license, high risk work license) should also be identified. The training needs can then be incorporated into individual annual appraisals and personal development reviews.
Where employees are unskilled in the required task, or expired mandatory and statutory competencies are identified, appropriate training or re-training should be provided prior to commencement of work. Employee training and re-training is recorded, monitored and kept up to date by their Line Manager and Supervisor.
A register containing information on specified levels of education, training, and experience must be established for each employee whose work is involved with any significant impact and safety hazard. The planned training programme for each individual then should be listed. The training sessions should, at a minimum:
Make the employee aware of the aspects and hazards, and the impacts and risks associated with their work; Include training required by applicable regulatory requirements and management system requirements; Include training necessary to obtain/retain required licenses or registrations; Emphasize responsibility for minimizing significant impacts and risks associated with their work; Identify potential consequences of departures from specified operating procedures; Address the benefits of improved personal performance. Even though some personnel may have the same job, the type or level of training may vary according to each person’s past education, training, and experience. Training options may be as simple as on-the-job training, administered by senior, or more experienced members; formal training, including classroom instruction; training provided by external consultants.
For some situations, commercially available training courses may be another alternative. Additional or customized training activities specific to individual needs, job descriptions, regulations and goals may be necessary depending on the existing skill level of each employee.
Additional specialist training for particular workers may be identified through the training needs analysis with input from job safety analysis forms and risk assessments, and may include hazard-specific training (e.g. hazardous chemicals, electrical safety, manual handling, confined spaces, etc.), prescribed training for licensing requirements (e.g. ionizing radiation, diving, forklift) or health and safety responsibilities training (e.g. H&S, first aiders, or emergency control personnel).
Staff with specific roles such as First Aiders, Fire Wardens or Health and Safety Representatives must attend nominated training for that specific role. The Human Resources Manager and the Line Managers and Supervisors should be responsible for sourcing suitable training from approved providers and for pre-course arrangements and administration.
On-the-job training should bes provided by a more experienced employee or by an external trainer, skilled in the requirements of that particular activity as indicated by their training record. The responsible person, together with the employee, ensures that the required level is achieved after undergoing training. Line Managers and Supervisors should be responsible for:
Nominating training mentor; Devising basic training plan; Ensure training is provided; Evaluation of the effectiveness of the training (during the appraisal process). Training records should be updated when a competence is attained.
Line Managers and Supervisors who engage contractors are responsible for providing a local area induction and for ensuring that the contractors are provided with information about potential known hazards of the environment in which they work. Records of contractor’s competency or licenses, their induction must be retained. Your organization must not allow a contractor to start work unless they have completed the following:
General health and safety induction training; General safety induction; Work or task specific briefings. The selection, engagement and management of suitably trained and competent contractors is often managed by the Health & Safety Manager in conjunction with Line Managers and Supervisors, and any related guidelines.
You may be a computer whiz, a scientific genius, or a master of mathematical theories. However, to be successful, you need more than just expertise in your given specialty. In fact, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employees (NACE), when participating employers were asked to name the attributes they seek in candidates, they gave their highest scores to the following three traits:
Interestingly, technical skills (59.6%) and computer skills (55.1%), often considered among the most important skills an applicant can possess in today’s high-tech job market, ranked quite low by comparison. The results make it clear that employers are paying much closer attention to soft skills in the workplace than they did in years past. In response to the demand for employees who also possess emotional intelligence, some postsecondary schools are incorporating soft skills in scientific and technical specialties. For example, Penn State’s Engineering Department offers a career development class for junior and senior engineering students that includes such topics as team-building skills, communication skills, and leadership strategies.
Soft skills are broadly classified as a combination of personality traits, behaviors, and social attitudes that allow people to communicate effectively, collaborate, and successfully manage conflict. People with good soft skills tend to have strong situational awareness and emotional intelligence that allows them to navigate difficult working environments while still producing positive results. This is especially important for leadership positions because good leadership is more about managing people and directing their efforts toward a desired outcome rather than bringing any specific technical skills to bear.
Another benefit of soft skills in the workplace is that they help people to adapt to changing circumstances. Being able to communicate effectively during a time of uncertainty or collaborate with others when solutions aren’t immediately obvious is hugely important whether someone is in a leadership position or not. Given their many applications, it’s hardly a surprise that organizations are doing more to assess a candidate’s soft skills during the interview process.
The Softskills needed in Today’s Workforce
Companies want employees who can supervise and direct other workers. They want employees who can cultivate relationships up, down, and across the organizational chain. Leaders must not only assess, motivate, encourage, and discipline workers but also build teams, resolve conflicts, and cultivate the organization’s desired culture. Understanding how to influence people and accommodate their needs is an essential element of leadership, which all too many companies overlook when they simply place someone with the most technical expertise in a position of authority. Soft skills development is often a key component of leadership training.
Most employees are part of a team/department/division, and even those who are not on an official team need to collaborate with other employees. You may prefer to work alone, but it’s important to demonstrate that you understand and appreciate the value of joining forces and working in partnership with others to accomplish the company’s goals. This shows that you possess the soft skills necessary to engage in productive collaboration.
Successful communication involves five components. Verbal communication refers to your ability to speak clearly and concisely. Nonverbal communication includes the capacity to project positive body language and facial expressions. Written communication refers to your skillfulness in composing text messages, reports, and other types of documents. Visual communication involves your ability to relay information using pictures and other visual aids. Active listening should also be considered a key communication soft skill because it helps you listen to and actually hear what others are saying. You need to be able to listen in order to understand how to best communicate with someone. Without strong listening skills, any communication efforts will be one-way and probably ineffective.
Many applicants try to minimize problems because they don’t understand that companies hire employees to solve problems. Glitches, bumps in the road, and stumbling blocks are all part of the job and represent learning opportunities. The ability to use your knowledge to find answers to pressing problems and formulate workable solutions will demonstrate that you can handle – and excel in – your job. Discussing mistakes and what you learned from them is an important part of building a soft skills resume.
While you may have a manager, companies don’t like to spend time micromanaging employees. They expect you to be responsible and do the job that you’re getting paid to do, which includes being punctual when you arrive at work, meeting deadlines, and making sure that your work is error-free. And going the extra mile shows that you’re committed to performing your work with excellence.
In the 21st century, companies need to make rapid (and sometimes drastic) changes to remain competitive. So they want workers who can also shift gears or change direction as needed. As organizations have become less hierarchical and agile over the last decade, it’s more important than ever for employees to be able to handle many different tasks and demonstrate a willingness to take on responsibilities that might lay outside their area of expertise.
This is a broad category of “people skills” and includes the ability to build and maintain relationships, develop rapport, and use diplomacy. It also includes the ability to give and receive constructive criticism, be tolerant and respectful regarding the opinions of others, and empathize with them. Of all the soft skills examples, this is among the most important because it is central to building teams with a strong foundation of trust and accountability.
Here are Interview Questions to identify soft skills
When your workforce has lots of technical skills but an absence of soft skills, you have a soft skills gap. Soft skills are what accompany the hard skills, and help your organization use its technical expertise to full advantage.
If you’re really good at getting clients, and not so good at retaining them, chances are you have a soft skills gap. If you have lots of staff turnover and have to keep retraining people, chances are you have a soft skills gap. When you have lots of managers but no real leaders – that’s a soft skills gap. In fact, whenever you are unable to capitalize on the wealth of knowledge, experience and proficiency within your team, then you should be assessing the level of communication and interpersonal skills that are present in your organization.
The workplace has evolved an interpersonal dynamic that can’t be ignored. The acts of listening, presenting ideas, resolving conflict, and fostering an open and honest work environment all come down to knowing how to build and maintain relationships with people. It’s those relationships that allow people to participate fully in team projects, show appreciation for others, and enlist support for their projects.
It’s important for you to recognize the vital role soft skills play within your team and not only work on developing them within yourself, but encourage their development throughout the organization. Areas to examine and evaluate include:
The more of these things you see around you, the better people’s soft skills are likely to be within your organization. These all have a significant impact on the attitude a person brings to interactions with clients, customers, colleagues, supervisors, and other stakeholders. The more positive someone’s attitude is, the better that person’s relationships will be. That’s what fosters great team performance, and leads people to contribute strongly to the organization’s vision and strategy.
But suppose you don’t have these skills? It’s never too late to develop them. For example, you can learn a lot just by observing other people within a company who excel in these seven areas. Also, offering to take on more responsibilities at work (serving on committees, planning events, etc.) can help you gain valuable experience. In addition, consider taking online soft-skills courses. Developing emotional intelligence will make you a more valuable employee, and increase your chances of career success.
Employee assessments can also reveal areas where improvements could be made, which makes it easier to put together a development plan to address those needs. People often focus specifically on technical skills or competencies when planning their development, but neglecting soft skills can make it difficult to succeed in future positions that require a high degree of emotional intelligence and social interaction (in other words, just about any leadership position).
There are various ways of practicing and achieving softskills.
The goal of our practice is to become fully aware of all facets of our experience in an unbroken, moment-to-moment flow. Much of what we do and experience is completely unconscious in the sense that we do it with little or no attention. Our minds are on something else entirely. We spend most of our time running on automatic pilot, lost in the fog of day-dreams and preoccupations.
One of the most frequently ignored aspects of our existence is our body. The technicolor cartoon show inside our head is so alluring that we tend to remove all of our attention from the kinesthetic and tactile senses. That information is pouring up the nerves and into the brain every second, but we have largely sealed it off from consciousness. It pours into the lower levels of the mind and it gets no further. Am example at AYCHPI
Your body goes through all kinds of contortions in the course of a single day. You sit and you stand. You walk and lie down. You bend, run, crawl, and sprawl. Meditation teachers urge you to become aware of this constantly ongoing dance. As you go through your day, spend a few seconds every few minutes to check your posture. Don’t do it in a judgmental way. This is not an exercise to correct your posture, or to improve you appearance. Sweep your attention down through the body and feel how you are holding it. Make a silent mental note of ‘Walking’ or ‘Sitting’ or ‘Lying down’ or ‘Standing’. It all sounds absurdly simple, but don’t slight this procedure. This is a powerful exercise. If you do it thoroughly, if you really instil this mental habit deeply, it can revolutionize your experience. It taps you into a whole new dimension of sensation, and you feel like a blind man whose sight has been restored.
Every action you perform is made up of separate components. The simple action of tying your shoelaces is made up of a complex series of subtle motions. Most of these details go unobserved. In order to promote the overall habit of mindfulness, you can perform simple activities at very low speed–making an effort to pay full attention to every nuance of the act.
Sitting at a table and drinking a cup of tea is one example. There is much here to be experienced. View your posture as you are sitting and feel the handle of the cup between your fingers. Smell the aroma of the tea, notice the placement of the cup, the tea, your arm, and the table. Watch the intention to raise the arm arise within your mind, feel the arm as it raises, feel the cup against your lips and the liquid pouring into your mouth. Taste the tea, then watch the arising of the intention to lower your arm. The entire process is fascinating and beautiful, if you attend to it fully, paying detached attention to every sensation and to the flow of thought and emotion.
This same tactic can be applied to many of your daily activities. Intentionally slowing down your thoughts, words and movements allows you to penetrate far more deeply into them than you otherwise could. What you find there is utterly astonishing. In the beginning, it is very difficult to keep this deliberately slow pace during most regular activities, but skill grows with time. Profound realizations occur during sitting meditation, but even more profound revelations can take place when we really examine our own inner workings in the midst of day-to-day activities. This is the laboratory where we really start to see the mechanisms of our own emotions and the operations of our passions. Here is where we can truly gauge the reliability of our reasoning, and glimpse the difference between our true motives and the armor of pretense that we wear to fool ourselves and others.
We will find a great deal of this information surprising, much of it disturbing, but all of it useful. Bare attention brings order into the clutter that collects in those untidy little hidden corners of the mind. As you achieve clear comprehension in the midst of life’s ordinary activities, you gain the ability to remain rational and peaceful while you throw the penetrating light of mindfulness into those irrational mental nooks and crannies. You start to see the extent to which you are responsible for your own mental suffering. You see your own miseries, fears, and tensions as self-generated. You see the way you cause your own suffering, weakness, and limitations. And the more deeply you understand these mental processes, the less hold they have on you.
Out of meditation is a primary focus is the breath. Total concentration on the ever-changing breath brings us squarely into the present moment. The same principle can be used in the midst of movement. You can coordinate the activity in which you are involved with your breathing. This lends a flowing rhythm to your movement, and it smooths out many of the abrupt transitions. Activity becomes easier to focus on, and mindfulness is increased. Your awareness thus stays more easily in the present. Ideally, meditation should be a 24 hour-a-day practice. This is a highly practical suggestion.
A state of mindfulness is a state of mental readiness. The mind is not burdened with preoccupations or bound in worries. Whatever comes up can be dealt with instantly. When you are truly mindful, your nervous system has a freshness and resiliency which fosters insight. A problem arises and you simply deal with it, quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss. You don’t stand there in a dither, and you don’t run off to a quiet corner so you can sit down and meditate about it. You simply deal with it. And in those rare circumstances when no solution seems possible, you don’t worry about that. You just go on to the next thing that needs your attention. Your intuition becomes a very practical faculty.
The concept of wasted time does not exist for a serious meditator. Little dead spaces during your day can be turned to profit. Every spare moment can be used for meditation. Sitting anxiously in the dentist’s office, meditate on your anxiety. Feeling irritated while standing in a line at the bank, meditate on irritation. Bored, twiddling you thumbs at the bus stop, meditate on boredom. Try to stay alert and aware throughout the day. Be mindful of exactly what is taking place right now, even if it is tedious drudgery. Take advantage of moments when you are alone. Take advantage of activities that are largely mechanical. Use every spare second to be mindful. Use all the moments you can.
You should try to maintain mindfulness of every activity and perception through the day, starting with the first perception when you awake, and ending with the last thought before you fall asleep. This is an incredibly tall goal to shoot for. Don’t expect to be able to achieve this work soon. Just take it slowly and let you abilities grow over time. The most feasible way to go about the task is to divide your day up into chunks. Dedicate a certain interval to mindfulness of posture, then extend this mindfulness to other simple activities: eating, washing, dressing, and so forth. Some time during the day, you can set aside 15 minutes or so to practice the observation of specific types of mental states: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings, for instance; or the hindrances, or thoughts. The specific routine is up to you. The idea is to get practice at spotting the various items, and to preserve your state of mindfulness as fully as you can throughout the day.
Try to achieve a daily routine in which there is as little difference as possible between seated meditation and the rest of your experience. Let the one slide naturally into the other. Your body is almost never still. There is always motion to observe. At the very least, there is breathing. Your mind never stops chattering, except in the very deepest states of concentration. There is always something coming up to observe. If you seriously apply your meditation, you will never be at a loss for something worthy of your attention.
Your practice must be made to apply to your everyday living situation. That is your laboratory. It provides the trials and challenges you need to make your practice deep and genuine. It’s the fire that purifies your practice of deception and error, the acid test that shows you when you are getting somewhere and when you are fooling yourself. If your meditation isn’t helping you to cope with everyday conflicts and struggles, then it is shallow. If your day-to-day emotional reactions are not becoming clearer and easier to manage, then you are wasting your time. And you never know how you are doing until you actually make that test.
The practice of mindfulness is supposed to be a universal practice. You don’t do it sometimes and drop it the rest of the time. You do it all the time. Meditation that is successful only when you are withdrawn in some soundproof ivory tower is still undeveloped. Insight meditation is the practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. The meditator learns to pay bare attention to the birth, growth, and decay of all the phenomena of the mind. He turns from none of it, and he lets none of it escape. Thoughts and emotions, activities and desires, the whole show. He watches it all and he watches it continuously. It matters not whether it is lovely or horrid, beautiful or shameful. He sees the way it is and the way it changes. No aspect of experience is excluded or avoided. It is a very thoroughgoing procedure.
If you are moving through your daily activities and you find yourself in a state of boredom, then meditate on your boredom. Find out how it feels, how it works, and what it is composed of. If you are angry, meditate on the anger. Explore the mechanics of anger. Don’t run from it. If you find yourself sitting in the grip of a dark depression, meditate on the depression. Investigate depression in a detached and inquiring way. Don’t flee from it blindly. Explore the maze and chart its pathways. That way you will be better able to cope with the next depression that comes along.
Meditating your way through the ups and downs of daily life is the whole point of softskills practice. This kind of practice is extremely rigorous and demanding, but it engenders a state of mental flexibility that is beyond comparison. A meditator keeps his mind open every second. He is constantly investigating life, inspecting his own experience, viewing existence in a detached and inquisitive way. Thus he is constantly open to truth in any form, from any source, and at any time. This is the state of mind you need for Liberation.
It is said that one may attain enlightenment at any moment if the mind is kept in a state of meditative readiness. The tiniest, most ordinary perception can be the stimulus: a view of the moon, the cry of a bird, the sound of the wind in the trees. it’s not so important what is perceived as the way in which you attend to that perception. The state of open readiness is essential. It could happen to you right now if you are ready. The tactile sensation of this book in your fingers could be the cue. The sound of these words in your head might be enough. You could attain enlightenment right now, if you are ready.
Soft skills are increasingly becoming the hard skills of today’s workforce. It’s just not enough to be highly trained in technical skills, without developing the softer, interpersonal and relationship-building skills that help people to communicate and collaborate effectively.
These people skills are more critical than ever as organizations struggle to find meaningful ways to remain competitive and be productive. Teamwork, leadership, and communication are underpinned by soft skills development. Since each is an essential element for organizational and personal success, developing these skills is very important and does matter.
Traditionally, people don’t receive adequate soft skills training – either during vocational instruction or as part of on-the-job training. That’s why services like AYCHConsultant are great for helping people build great people-skills.
[ Resources: aychpi, mindtools.com, skillsyouned.com, omniagroup.com, ]