Significance of soft skills: In employment generation and employability
Dr Aditi Sharma *
Human capital is an essential component of economic growth.
According to Economist Theodore Schultz who invented the term in the 1960s to reflect the value of our human capacities; human capital is like any other type of capital; it could be invested in through education, training and enhanced benefits that will lead to an improvement in the quality and level of production.
The concept of human capital recognizes that not all labour is equal and that the quality of employees can be improved by investing in them. The education, experience and abilities of an employee have an economic value for employers and for the economy as a whole.
The continuing growth in per capita incomes of many countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is partly due to the expansion of scientific and technical knowledge that raises the productivity of labour and other inputs in production.
And the increasing reliance of industry on sophisticated knowledge greatly enhances the value of education, technical schooling, on-the-job training, and other human capital. The result of latest research studies reveals that in the present changing economic scenario multiple skills are used for economic and social success.
The component of human capital like soft skills are influencing long run labour market success, their productivity and revenue generation.
According to the Economist James J Heckman the Noble prize winner for economics in year 2000, and Tim Kautz, in their paper, “Hard Evidence on Soft Skills”. Define soft skills as personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labour market.
Soft skills predict success in life, they causally produce that success, and the programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies. Schooling plays important role in boosting cognitive and non cognitive skills.
Evidence from social experiments and studies of the effect of schooling on growth of personality traits show that these traits can be changed by schooling interventions and enriched family environments.
Soft skills is the concept of new economic thinking. The soft skills awareness and development is a major component of human capital in changing economic structure.
Soft skills are influencing employment in all most every sector. There is impact of soft skills of an individual on his selection, growth and productivity in his work environment.
The various researches reveal the fact that unemployed Indian youth are lacking in soft skills and unable to meet employers demand as far as skills are concerned.
There is high need for soft skills awareness among the youth for increasing employment opportunities. The soft skills development is call of the hour.
Policy decision should be made to bring improvements in the academic structure in India .Soft Skills development should be done right from the beginning . It should be the part of schooling and graduation as a compulsory subject.
* Dr Aditi Sharma wrote this article for The Sangai Express
The writer is an academician and soft skills trainer.
This article was webcasted on July 05, 2016.
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