1.

The Importance of Soft Skills Development in

Supply Chain and Logistics
Jan 5, 2016 | Business Improvement, People | 0 comments
Amid all the current rhetoric about supply chain management and its changing
nature, the topic of training and education is receiving perhaps more than its fair share of
attention.
Many pundits for example, are suggesting that supply chain training and logistics
education programs need to change, quoting in particular, the need for a greater
emphasis on technology-based skills, analytics especially.
While I won’t argue with the growing importance of technology’s role, the one thing I’d
suggest we don’t lose sight of is the other major factor in supply chain evolution—
relationships.

The Growing need for Soft Skills Development

Supply Chain has always been about relationships.
In fact, it has been said that supply chain management is relationship management.
From my perspective, that statement becomes more true as corporations increasingly
leverage partnerships to improve synchronisation of supply with demand across global
infrastructures.
Technology can certainly support business relationships to some extent. However
creating and maintaining productive and effective relationships is a long way from being
manageable without people to foster and nurture them. Hence the need for all supply
chain professionals to focus on soft-skills development is as great, if not greater than it
ever was.

Which Soft Skills Development Areas Matter

Most?
If you’re a supply chain professional yourself or, are responsible for the career
development of others, it’s reasonable to ask which soft skills you should focus on when
setting goals and undertaking development activity.
While there are no hard and fast rules about this, you should probably prioritise your soft
skills development as follows:

1) Communication:
Technology can aid communication, but it still requires you to make use of text or the
spoken word. The ability to communicate appropriately, depending on context and the
nature of the audience, should always be the top priority in soft-skills development,
critical as communication is for building and managing positive relationships.
2) Interpersonal Skills:
This goes hand-in-hand with communication, but covers a broader scope. Interpersonal
skills enable people to know what type of communication is appropriate and when.
Interpersonal skills also relate to the way you interact when working with others. They
encompass qualities such as tact, diplomacy, and team-working, as well as extending
into the art of good leadership.
3) Observation and Listening:
I have grouped these two skills together with good reason. Whenever you’re not actively
engaged in interpersonal interactions, watching and listening to what’s going on around
you is the best way to learn and develop. Like communication, technology can help you
to watch and listen, but it can’t force-feed you with information. You must have the desire
to see and to hear.
Isn’t Leadership a Soft Skill Too?
Perhaps you’re wondering why I haven’t really mentioned leadership skills in this list of
soft-skills development priorities. I offer two good reasons for this:
Firstly, communication, interpersonal skills, observation and listening are all areas that
every supply chain professional should focus on developing. Not everyone wishes to
take on a leadership role though.
Secondly, good leadership makes extensive use of all the skills mentioned above,
which should therefore be developed to an advanced level before leaders start thinking
about their other soft-skill development-needs.

Soft Skills Development Needs are Here to Stay

It will probably be decades before artificial intelligence can enable technology to replace
the human touch in relationship management, if indeed it ever can. Therefore, as supply
chain management continues to rely more and more on strong, solid, collaborative
relationships; organisations and the individuals who work for them should strive
wherever possible to improve soft skills and employ them tirelessly.

2. Reference

The role of soft skills in SCM

posted by Dr Ozlem Bak, Christine Jordan, James Midgley
in Careers and skills, Procurement
24 May 2019

With supply chains expanding in scope and scale globally, the

academic and professional literature underlines the increasing role
and importance of soft skills.

Traditionally, the supply chain literature has been geared towards hard
skills including functional and technical skill sets with limited discussion of
soft skills. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to assess and explore
the demand for soft skills in the supply chain management (SCM) arena.

Our study has utilised a mixed methods approach in two phases, with the
first stage including a questionnaire distributed to 120 supply chain
employees in the UK, followed by six interviews with supply chain experts
in the UK.

The supply chain skills indicated the need for a balance of both hard skills
(functional) as well as soft skills (relational) in order to manage global
supply chains.

In the last 20 years there has been a growing emphasis towards ‘softer’
aspects of supply chain skills, whereby, soft skills have been defined as
abilities and traits that pertain to personality, attitude, and behaviour rather
than to formal or technical knowledge.

However, the tendency in the supply chain research agenda was towards
hard skills, as these were regarded more attributable to employers’ needs.
Hard skills were interlinked with functional and management skills, such as
inventory management, transport management and logistics service
management.

But a recent study conducted by Capgemini Consulting (2015) supported

the fact that future supply chain skills will need to include soft skills to
supplement hard skills, and another survey found that 72% of CEO’s felt
that soft skills are more important for their business in the current
environment (Economist, 2016).
With the increasing demand for soft skills, new skills sets have been
recognised, such as flexibility and negotiation, which have not necessarily
been associated with supply chain and logistics in the past. Our study
results suggest that soft skills, especially behavioural skills such as
communication, planning, initiative and negotiation were seen to be more
important.

Our findings indicated that the changing supply chain scope encourages
the requisition and development of different supply chain soft skills with
varied levels of emphasis in relation to 15 soft skills identified in the
literature: Problem solving (PRO); Planning skills (PLN); Flexibility (FLX);
Organisational skills (OSM); Communication skills (COM); Time
management (TIM); Motivation and enthusiasm (MAE); Stress
management (SSM); Initiative (INI); People management (PEM);
Collaborative learning (COL); Teamwork (TEW); Leadership skills (LES);
Management of complexity and change (MCC); Negotiation (NEG).

Supply chains are increasingly people-driven and are highly dependent on

specific skills, and the strength of these skills, for their overall success.

The distribution of soft skills in the supply chain

Our study indicated several findings:

 The changing competitive global environment indicated the

increasing need for supply chain soft skills with emphasis placed on
behavioural, decision making and management skills as critical in
soft skill discussions in the UK.
 Specifically, behavioural skills such as communication, planning,
initiative and negotiation were seen to be more important when
compared to decision-making, negotiation and management skills.
 The changing supply chain scope encourages the requisition and
development of different supply chain soft skills with varied levels of
emphasis in relation to 15 soft skills identified in the literature.

Specific soft skills seem to be more critical to certain supply chain

employers compared to others (e.g. behavioural and people management
skills), which may be a result of factors such as the nature of those
organisations, the sector they operate in, the relative size and structure,
and their competitive environment. Although many of these soft skills derive
from innate ability, the organisation and workplace culture plays a
considerable role and its impact upon soft skills is recognised as of
increasing importance.

Based on our findings, organisations, educators and employers should be

encouraged to consider ways in which soft skills can be explored,
developed and enhanced, within the context of their working environments,
and assign relevant training initiatives. Soft skills training initiatives may be
most effective when driven by the joint effort of both educators and
employers, and this could offer a valuable future strand of competition.

☛ Dr Ozlem Bak, Brunel Business School; Christine Jordan, University of

Huddersfield; and James Midgley, Cargo-Partners
3rd Reference

Soft skills can be vital during a digital transformation, CPOs tell

ProcureCon Europe delegates

The intersection between people and technology was high on the agenda
at the recent ProcureCon Europe conference in Prague. CPOs from across
Europe shared their strategies on automation, making intelligent use of
data and leveraging the latest technology.

But it was the human impact of using such tools that tied these
conversations together. The future of work may be highly automated, but it
also makes uniquely human qualities – those softer and more relationship-
based skills – even more important. Here are some of the event’s
takeaways…

Digital requires fresh leadership

Thierry Larroque, VP procurement digital transformation at Airbus, stressed

that digital leadership needs to be different. “If you want to drive the
business to its digital future, you need to be a leader who will keep the
team committed and engaged, drive cultures of innovation, take on risk and
who has multidisciplinary expertise,” he said. Agility and being willing to
learn from failure are also key attributes, he added.

What’s in it for me?

When trying to get internal stakeholders to embrace digital tools, you need
to sell the personal benefits. Zsolt Szeker, head of telecom & IT solutions
procurement at Nokia, said that during implementation his team used the
message: “We want to give you an hour to spend with your family, and less
time dealing with data.” BMW procurement director Bodo Bokaemper
added: “Simplicity should be the focus, so you shouldn’t have to convince
people – my ambition is to have no training and no manuals [when
implementing a new tool].”

Deep supplier relationships

Several speakers focused on the importance of fostering deep supplier

partnerships. Tomas Veit, head of procurement at Asahi, said while it used
to be about “pushing on the margins of our suppliers”, now his team is
asking “what can we change to make their lives easier?” “It’s about those
other opportunities, from an innovation perspective, and it’s about
partnerships,” he said. Ashley Bates, VP procurement and contracting
operations at Shell, agreed procurement needed to be seen “more as a
relationship business”. “We need to transform how we work with our
suppliers,” he added.

Investing in the future

This focus on relationships is sometimes as simple as having a cup of

coffee with a supplier – but not everyone sees it that way. Nina Bomberg,
global lead buyer at SEG Automotive (formerly part of Bosch) shared her
experiences on remaining a customer of choice, given SEG has much less
buying power and influence than Bosch. “Last year, I asked a colleague
where I could get coffee for a supplier meeting,” she recalled. “Their
response: ‘Not in five years have I ever given coffee to a supplier’. From
some people there’s still a long way to go. Supplier relationships are like a
bank account. You need to pay in so you can get something out. If you
constantly live in debt, it won’t work.”