On the job game-based learning is effective

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Honing their employees' so-called 'soft' skills, those personality traits that are associated with a person's emotional intelligence (or EQ) and which enable them to interact well with other people, is not usually high up on the C-Suite leader's list of priorities. In other words, good old people skills are not a priority.

Yet when the employees do not have the necessary social graces, effective communication skills, language, good personal habits and friendliness, it can do great damage to a brand and business. "In fact, a socially disengaged employee can often cost a business dearly and even cause its demise entirely," said Aim's Lize Monametsi. "Soft skills should be just as essential as hard skills - which are the teachable, occupational requirements of a job, such as having the ability to type when you are a secretary, because even if an employee does not ever deal with customers directly, he still has to get along, cooperate, and - in most cases - collaborate with colleagues."

These days, hard skills are not a problem among the tech-savvy Millennials. As the generation entering the work force right now and currently consisting of 30% of the working population, they are confidently striding into the office with degrees under their arms and loads of tech know-how, ready for business. Some of them even boast valuable on-the-job experience as interns.

Soft skills lacking

Yet they seem to sorely lack in soft skills, since acquiring hard skills was far more important to them as they deem it more important in the business world, according to a 2014 study conducted by Bentley University. The study found that there was a clear disconnect between which skills business leaders deem important, and which were considered important by Millennials. Among the business leaders, 81% agreed that integrity is important, while 75% rated professionalism highly, and 75% rooted for a positive attitude. Of the Millennials, only 63% rated integrity, 69% professionalism, and 68% a positive attitude as important.

"The thing is, having weak or no people skills can negatively impact on your own job performance as well," Monametsi said. "BankersLab, a global company which provides coaching for professionals in the retail banking industry, made an observation earlier this year while watching a group of banking professionals who participated in its simulation-based training. They noticed that many of the teams who had bad financial outcomes in the simulation also had a poor grasp of collaboration, time management and had trouble with teamwork. This was despite the fact that they had a firm grip on the technical and numerical aspects that were required during the exercise."

Luckily, soft skills can also be taught, Monametsi said. "Not only that, but it can be taught in a way which is familiar and appealing to Millennials, through specialised game play."

She concluded that game-based learning is effective, because it engages players in a way that conventional training does not. "A game such as Aim's Navigator allows players to experience a virtual business environment. Most Navigators we build are team games that magnify employees' people skills. Real-time feedback is provided on the impact of their decisions on various business matters, matters which require soft skills to handle, such as the ability to work towards a common goal and to satisfy customers."