Reframing soft skills as critical to workplace success

TECHNICAL competency is valuable. However, it's not enough if you want long-term professional success.

- SHANNON MCKEEN

At a recent academic conference, I noticed a familiar unease ripple through conversations about “soft skills”. Many participants winced at the term. They recognised its inadequacy, yet struggled to agree on a better alternative. People floated around suggestions like “human skills”, “essential skills” or “power skills” but none seemed to stick.

This persistent terminology problem reflects a deeper tension in our educational systems. There’s a long-standing bias that elevates “hard” technical competencies over the nuanced, deeply human capabilities that actually define long-term professional success.

Historically, hard skills emerged from the natural sciences — quantitative, measurable and increasingly automatable. Soft skills, on the other hand, draw from the liberal arts, humanities and social sciences. These disciplines help us understand human behaviour, expression and interaction — qualities that are notoriously difficult to quantify and even harder to teach.

In business analytics, technical fluency is the price of entry. However, what propels a career isn’t just knowing which model to run; it’s being able to explain it to a client, manage a team under pressure, adapt when the data shifts and negotiate conflicting priorities. The multiplier is the human element.

If we want students and professionals to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence, we need to stop treating soft skills like fluff. They are complex, teachable and foundational to success. And they need a better framework.

Reframing the spectrum