DEFINITION, DEVELOPMENT, ASSESSMENT OF SOFT SKILLS AND THEIR ROLE FOR THE QUALITY OF ORGANIZATIONS AND ENTERPRISES

• Main Author: Barbara Cimatti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Center for Quality, Faculty of Engineering, University of Kragujevac, Serbia 2016-03-01
• Series: International Journal for Quality Research
• Subjects: quality; soft skills; management; organization
• Online Access: http://www.ijqr.net/journal/v10-n1/5.pdf

Soft Skills is a very popular term nowadays, used to indicate personal transversal competences such as social aptitudes, language and communication capability, friendliness and ability of working in team and other personality traits that characterize relationships between people. Soft Skills are traditionally considered complementary of Hard Skills, which are the abilities to perform a certain type of task or activity. Soft Skills are strategic to be successful in personal and professional life then are essential for a candidate when he tries to obtain any kind of job. Enterprises generally hire new employees, in particular recent graduates, taking more in consideration their Soft Skills than their Hard Skills. This happens also for technical professions, such as engineers, because the company, in order to be competitive, needs to create good and effective teams and a collaborative working atmosphere. The quality of products provided by any industry then doesn't only base on the materials chosen and on the technology used, neither only on the expertise of workers who contribute to their fabrication, but also on the quality of the enterprise in its whole. And this quality strongly depends from the human resources involved and their capability of positively interacting to achieve a common aim: the company success.