A “lack of interpersonal skills” is costing accountants £550m every year
The UK’s skills gap is old news. But did you know that our lack of “soft” skills is costing us dearly too?
With the first generation to have grown up with automation entering the workforce, our verbal communication skills seem to be crashing fast. And it appears to be showing in our pay checks already.
A shortage of skills including good verbal communication, empathy and good listening is setting back accountants £572m in wages every year, a new study from financial recruiter Marks Sattin has found (what it would be for the workforce as a whole is not revealed. Too depressing to contemplate, one imagines).
This news follows on another recent study that found most of us are already beginning to act like robots at work, suggesting that some 80 per cent of us don’t have the “necessary interpersonal skills”.
More than half of those polled, 54 per cent, complained that their training hadn’t provided them with the soft skills needed.
Dave Way, managing director at Marks Sattin, suggested that jobs were numbers skills were once enough now require more in the way of interpersonal skills too:
Being a good accountant and a ‘numbers person’ is now taken as read. The A-players of the accountancy world also need to be outstanding communicators and proactive in driving relationships.
On average, accountants believed they’d be £4,700 better off every year if they were better at soft skills.