Promote the best engineer on a team and the company loses a good engineer. Whether it gains a good manager is a separate question. However, promotion committees rarely ask it in writing. Instead, they read a detailed technical record. Meanwhile, that same file says nothing about the engineer’s ability to run a difficult meeting, to decide without full information, or to notice that a colleague has stopped speaking up.
That gap is expensive, and it is growing. Recruiters filter on technical criteria because technical criteria are easy to measure. Salary negotiations follow the same logic. As a result, managers fall back on instinct when they weigh the behaviours that actually decide whether a new hire performs. Working out which soft skills by role genuinely matter is slower work. Still, it pays better than the alternative.
The measurable part
The term does not help. “Soft skills” suggests something optional, and something that resists measurement. In fact, neither claim holds up. The evidence behind the idea is more solid than the label suggests.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 finds that employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. That is down from 44% two years earlier. In other words, the pace of change is levelling off rather than slowing.
One detail gets lost in most summaries of the report. Technological skills are the fastest-rising category, not behavioural ones. But the human skills that climb alongside them are specific rather than vague: creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, curiosity and continuous learning.
The OECD’s 2025 study, Skills that Matter for Success and Well-being in Adulthood, is more striking. It draws on the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. Social and emotional skills, it finds, affect employment, wages and job satisfaction on their own, separately from the cognitive skills the survey measures. Two people with identical literacy and numeracy do not fare equally well at work. Nor is the difference random.
Swiss policy has caught up faster than most. Federal skilled labour strategy aims to strengthen advice services and adult learning, on the view that Switzerland must develop its shrinking pool of specialists rather than simply recruit more of them. For firms in Geneva, Vaud and the rest of French-speaking Switzerland, competition for experienced staff is sharp and notice periods are long. So developing the person you already have usually costs less than finding another one.
Different jobs, different skills
Most corporate answers to this treat everyone the same. A firm decides soft skills are a priority, buys a communication course, sends the whole company, and records attendance. As a result, very little changes, and the sceptics feel confirmed.
The table below is narrower on purpose. It names the two to four behaviours that separate strong from average performance in each role, rather than every quality a decent colleague might have.
| Role | Behaviours that separate strong from average |
|---|---|
| Manager | Leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, decision-making |
| Sales | Active listening, persuasion, negotiation, empathy |
| HR manager | Communication, discretion, emotional intelligence, mediation |
| Project manager | Organisation, leadership, stress management, problem-solving |
| Administrative assistant | Organisation, accuracy, communication, prioritisation |
| Technician | Adaptability, autonomy, teamwork, problem-solving |
| Engineer | Analytical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication |
| Customer service | Empathy, patience, conflict handling, communication |
| Executive | Strategic vision, leadership, emotional intelligence, decision-making |
Two conclusions follow. Communication appears almost everywhere, so it is the one skill worth training across the whole company. By contrast, everything else is specific to the role. A single course for all staff is therefore not just inefficient. It speaks to nobody in particular.
The cost of getting this wrong is rarely dramatic. It builds up quietly. For example, a manager with no emotional intelligence can hit every target for two years and exhaust the team doing it. A salesperson who does not listen loses contracts that were winnable, then reports that the market was difficult. Similarly, a project manager who cannot handle pressure passes it down the line unchanged.
Practice, not theory
People can learn behaviour. However, the method matters more than the content. A two-hour presentation on active listening changes almost nothing, for the same reason a lecture on swimming leaves the audience dry. What works is repeated practice with someone watching, such as role-play, simulation, individual coaching, peer groups, mentoring, and feedback specific enough to act on.
Anyone signing off a training budget can apply one simple test. What share of the programme involves participants doing something rather than watching? Below roughly half, the skill tends not to survive the return to the office.
The same logic applies day to day. In practice, nobody manages a behaviour that appears in no job description, comes up in no appraisal and attracts no feedback. By contrast, employers who write these skills into their competency frameworks, and who train line managers to discuss them without embarrassment, are the ones who see a return.
Two fair objections
The first is measurement. Most social and emotional skills rely on self-assessment. Personality questionnaires also remain imperfect tools. Therefore, treat scores as indications rather than verdicts.
The second is fashion. The vocabulary changes every few years, and consultancies have an obvious interest in refreshing it.
Still, neither objection touches the substance. Jobs differ in what they demand. Those demands are visible to anyone who looks. The evidence that behaviour predicts performance is not soft. The habit of not examining it is.
Reader questions
What are soft skills?
Behavioural, relational and emotional abilities that shape how someone works with others and adapts to change. Unlike technical skills, they transfer from one job to another.
Which soft skills matter most by role?
Managers depend on leadership, communication and emotional intelligence. Sales roles depend on active listening and negotiation. Project managers need organisation and stress management. Communication is the only skill common to almost every role.
Can people learn soft skills?
Yes. OECD evidence shows these skills keep developing through adulthood. Moreover, practice-based formats such as role-play, coaching and structured feedback work better than theory-led courses.
In our series ☀️ A Different Way to Learn This Summer:
- ✅ Episode 1 — Soft skills by role
- ⏳ Episode 2 — The most sought-after skills in Switzerland
- ⏳ Episode 3 — Why technical skills are no longer enough in the age of AI
- ⏳ Episode 4 — How do adults really learn?
Want to build these skills in your teams?
Swissnova designs practice-based training that embeds soft skills in day-to-day work, in Geneva, Vaud and across French-speaking Switzerland.