Skills Development in Southeast Asia: How Soft Skills Boosts Business & Employee Retention Rates

In this conversation we spoke to Thijs van Loon, CEO and founder of Betterworks Asia. As an experienced skills development facilitator, Thijs is now leveraging his two decades of experience helping companies in Southeast Asia upskill in all manner of business operations. Part of this involves developing soft skills, which he believes businesses are starting to emphasise globally. By focusing on their development, Thijs is sure companies can reap a variety of cost-saving, value-raising, and revenue-boosting benefits. 

Soft Skills For Skills Development: What Are They?

Soft skills are a term you might’ve heard of before, but you may still be unsure what it actually refers to. As per Workable, soft skills are general, non job-specific traits which can help employees excel in the workplace. The converse are known as hard skills, which tend to be more technical, job specific skills. Here’s a table comparing the two.

The Value Of Soft Skills: Cross-Cultural Importance 

The importance of soft skills has been known since way back in the early 1900’s. According to research conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation, and Stanford Research Center, they concluded that 85% of job success comes from having well‐developed soft skills, while only 15% of job success comes from hard skills.

Despite these numbers, there remains a gap in the perceived importance of the two skill types. As per a State of the Industry Report, when U.S. employers spent $171.5 billion on employee learning and development in 2010, only 27.6% of those training dollars went to soft skills training. 

Thankfully, that trend is changing. A steady increase in the demand and importance of soft skills has been seen worldwide. In Vietnam, a 2024 survey conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry found that 75% of employers in Vietnam prioritize soft skills when recruiting new talent. While these numbers point to a future in which soft skills are given their rightful attention, it’s worth taking a look at what happens without proper skills training. 

A Skills Development Facilitator In Vietnam: What’s Missing?

Based on his decades of experience and time spent working in a variety of countries, Thijs has outlined 4 main issues for when people don’t train soft skills. 

• People lack clear goals

Without proper soft skills training, employees in a company are only ever focused on day-to-day operations. This means they lack clear, long-term goals which hinders innovation, growth, and alignment with an organization’s strategic targets.

• Employee engagement and retention decreases

Teams lacking in soft skills like empathy, active listening, and conflict resolution tend to leave employees feeling undervalued or unsupported. This can lead to frustration, low morale, and higher turnover rates. As per People Keep, the average costs to replace an employee can be one to two times their yearly salary making this something you want to avoid at all costs. 

• People fail to communicate

A large part of soft skills training has to do with improving communication skills. Without strong communication skills, misunderstandings increase. This leads to inefficiencies, missed deadlines, and conflict. This is especially bad in cross-cultural settings. 

• Missed leadership development opportunities 

Without training in leadership-focused soft skills like delegation, coaching, and emotional intelligence, organizations lack a strong talent pipeline. This results in ineffective leadership and stalled growth.

Highlighting The Value of Soft Skills Training: A 5-Step Process 

While the importance of soft skills should be clear by now, Thijs outlines a 5-step process for showcasing how soft skills training can be cost-saving, value-raising, and revenue-boosting. 

1. Find The Gaps

As mentioned in the previous section, one of the main issues with an absence of soft skills training is that people lack clear goals. This prevents them from growing. That’s why the first step in this process focuses on finding these gaps and filling them with goals. Soft skills training helps with this by teaching people to align their personal goals with company strategy, ensuring a symbiosis between the two. 

1. Track Your Value

With the gaps identified, Thijs says it’s time to start tracking the value you and your company provide. The value is the positive output you generate with your client, whether that be for a product or a service. This is the reason they come to you. Understanding the value you create is key. By doing so, it’s possible to get a clear cut view of what you’re currently doing and how you can improve. 

1. Connect Your Values With Your Skills

Now that you understand what value you provide, you need to connect those values with the skills you already possess and those you need to learn. 

Take a taxi driver. A taxi driver provides value by getting customers from one place to the next. However, the manner in which they do so changes the value they provide. Are they calm, smooth drivers? Are they irritable and impatient? Beyond driving, are they great conversationalists or are they uninterested? 

All these skills add and subtract from the final value a taxi driver provides. Understanding this in the context of your own work can help you better connect your values with your skills. 

1. Build Training That Matters

Now it’s possible to build training that increases not only your skills but also the value you provide. This is easier because you’ve already identified the gaps, values, and skills in your company, so all you really have to do is base the training off of those factors. One aspect that’s important to remember is to conduct training in a timely manner–You need to provide time for training to take place and information to sink in!

1. Generate Revenue

Following these steps, you can now generate revenue from your effective soft skills training sessions. This also involves having measurement tools in place to ensure training produces results. A great way to do this is by working hand in hand with operations teams and running Quality Report checks to see values are being delivered upon.  

Bridging The Cross-Cultural Gap With Soft Skills

Another benefit of understanding soft skills is the ability to bridge cross-cultural gaps in the workplace. Having opened Betterworks Asia in 2019, Thijs has seen first-hand how some foreign companies and managers struggle when moving to Vietnam and coming face to face with the subtleties of its workplace culture. 

Soft skills training provides a foundation for bridging these gaps and ensuring that differences in background and culture don’t affect the efficacy of business operations. Areas such as cross-cultural communication will be fleshed out to ensure successful transitions into the Southeast Asian workforce. 

Case Study: A Skills Development Facilitator’s Work With Pizza 4Ps

As one of Vietnam’s most popular restaurants, Pizza 4P’s has been making waves in the country ever since it opened back in 2011. So when they approached Thijs for work in 2022, he was more than excited to get on board. 

He joined as an interim training manager. Essentially, someone who’s a consultant and in charge of building and implementing training strategy. From there, he began by looking at the company’s overall model in order to get an idea of how they operated across their 40+ stores. Doing this gave him the idea to have training take place in every regional store, as opposed to through online or e-learning sessions. While these take more time and effort, Thijs believed the impact would be greater and Pizza 4P’s were happy to give it a try.  

At that point it became necessary to understand what was needed for actual training sessions by having trainers rotating around Pizza 4P’s numerous outlets. Discussions with different partners in the business became crucial. Finally, a training program focusing on leadership and management skills came together. 

This program was neatly aligned with Pizza 4Ps culture, which places a strong emphasis on the highest quality service. The program not only ensured this, it also left space for people’s own ability to think critically, take initiative, and grow autonomously. It’s still in use today. 

Learn More From Vietnam’s Leading Skills Development Facilitator

Soft skills training can help boost business and employee retention rates, but that’s not all that Thijs does with Betterworks Asia. By leveraging experience from Google and Apple, in addition to certifications in NLP, Psych-K, DISC Flow, and LEGO© Serious Play©, Thijs offers tailored, practical solutions that deliver immediate results to your business.

If you’re interested in learning more, why not visit Betterworks Asia? Otherwise, connect with Thijs on LinkedIn, he’s always happy to talk!

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Source: Vietnam Insider