Read our point-of-view on why simulation learning is the most efficient and effective way to upskill.

The soft skills imperative

Skills are hard currency in today’s fast-moving digital world and it’s not just digital skills that everyone wants – soft skills are now recognized as being just as important as technical know-how. Even more important perhaps, because digital skills tend to have a fairly short shelf life, making it imperative that people are able to keep learning, relearning and upskilling so that knowledge is constantly regenerated.

It is vital that organizations engender a culture of constant upskilling. Immersive simulation learning is a
highly effective way of doing this. Simulations are interactive, engaging, and intuitive - all the elements needed to make upskilling work. Because simulations are designed with both user and business needs at the
core, they enable targeted learning that produces tangible business results. Simulations can be implemented
and rolled out quickly and at scale across an organization, making them a highly efficient way to upskill large
groups of learners. They are also naturally suited to soft skills training, enabling employees to practice and
hone skills to best effect.

Soft skills training is increasingly important to employers. LinkedIn Learning’s workplace learning
report shows just how business critical soft skills have become. The three most important workplace skills,
according to the report, are:

• leadership and management (57%)
• creative problem-solving and design thinking (42%), and
• communication (40%).

In particular, organizations that rely on people as their key asset must ensure their workforce has the soft
skills that will enable their business to thrive and innovate. But, a lot of employers struggle to keep their
workers’ skill sets up to date. Soft skills have become even more business-critical with the advent of hybrid working and the continued tight labor market.

In order to equip employees with these all-important soft skills, organizations have to make upskilling efficient and effective. Simulation learning achieves this in several ways.

• It is efficient because organizations are able to access behavioral data to make training targeted, so that learners are only learning the skills they need to learn. Efficiencies also come from simulations being a highly scalable and consistent form of learning.
• Secondly, it is effective because it is so immersive and contextual. It is based on scenarios that are relevant to the learner and the business, making behavior change much more likely. 

The reality is that corporate skills training has needed an overhaul for a very long time.  Organizations need to seize this opportunity to go digital and make learning better through really targeted, immersive solutions that bring about the desired behavior change.

What makes simulations...

What needs to change & why

Traditionally, most soft skills training has taken place using archetypal face-to-face, instructor led training
(ILT) methods. But the ‘train-then-assess’ method is not fit for purpose. Why? Because it is very limited and
inefficient. It doesn’t allow for important personal soft skills variations. It doesn’t provide tailored, immersive
real-life scenarios. It doesn’t enable learners to keep practicing and honing their skills or to access and
benchmark their development. And it doesn’t provide L&D or the business with consistent behavioral data
or analytics that show soft skills capabilities and gaps. When organizations have personalized behavioral
data and analytics, they can use it to create really targeted, strategic interventions that address gaps on an
individual, team, and workforce level.

Face-to-face ILT is costly, unscalable and time-consuming. It takes people away from work for large chunks
of time and trainer costs can be prohibitive. And during the Covid-19 pandemic and global lockdowns, it also
became a potentially unsafe and non-compliant learning method.

Summary

The reality is that a digital world, one that requires digital skills and a digital mindset, needs digital learning.
Why would organizations do their soft skills training any other way?

People often mistakenly assume that soft skills training is best-done face-to-face, but that is far from the truth. When digital soft skills training is done well, it’s immersive, using digital real-world simulations. It’s contextual and highly personalized to the learner and the business. It’s data-centric and interventions can be designed, built and distributed at speed, enabling learning to be relevant and delivered right at the point of need. The best learning is always learner-centric, business-centric, and data-driven and that’s what digital provides.