THE EFFICACY OF "SOFT" SKILLS TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: QUALITATIVE SURVEY OF THE EXPERIENCES OF CZECH BUSINESSES.

"Soft" skills training and development courses often have a limited impact, even if employees are satisfied with the results. The reason is the nature of such skills, which may require employees to shed deeply rooted habits before developing new skills. The lack of efficacy of such training courses is often related to their poorly defined focus and content, as well as to the unprofessional methods applied, which in some cases is associated with the low quality of the lecturers. These factors, acting in combination, can sometimes lead to the illusion, on the side of companies or their managers, that those employees who have completed such training courses have mastered certain soft skills, while in truth the situation is very different. The article deals with the specific features of soft skills compared to their "hard" counterparts, how this affects the efficacy of such training courses, the most common reasons why soft skills training courses do not deliver the expected results, as well as ways how to tackle the problem. A qualitative survey was conducted to determine to what extent medium-sized and larger Czech companies are aware of the potential flaws and the lack of efficacy of soft skills training courses and what methods can be applied to resolve this and with what results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]