Perceived instructional requirements of

hard skills trainers and soft skills trainers

Instructional Requirements
Wisshack and Hochholdinger (2020) investigated whether or not hard-skills trainers
and soft-skills trainers had different perspectives regarding the instructional knowledge
and skills they required. It was hypothesized that those who taught hard-skills as
distinct from those teaching soft-skills are likely to have different perspectives as to the
skills needed for effective training, that is, training that transfers to the workplace and
hence has an impact. The concept of transfer implies that trainees maintain and apply
the skills, attitudes and knowledge acquired during training in their day to day working
lives.

Research and Theoretical Background

The research literature has given limited attention to training content and it is unclear how
this affects learning and its transfer. This is despite its being included in a number of
models of training effectiveness and transfer. In contrast, trainee characteristics, the
workplace environment and the design of training have all received significant research
attention.
Soft skills have been defined as interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills. They have been
characterized as consisting of the following categories: leadership skills, communication
skills, problem-solving/decision-making skills, management skills, self-management skills,
interpersonal skills, organizational skills, selling skills, analysis/creativity skills and political
skills. In contrast to soft-skills trainers, hard-skill trainers teach about things or facts such as
regulations, software or machines.
It appears from previous research that soft skills are more difficult to transfer from training,
possibly because social skills can be situation-specific. The professional skills and
knowledge and instructional activities of trainers appear to be understudied thus far in the
research literature.

Methodology and Results

From the previous training literature, Wisshack and Hochholdinger used 14 items
covering relevant instructional knowledge and skills in a questionnaire which was
applied online. It was completed by 61 hard-skills trainers and 129 soft-skills
trainers.
H1. Soft-skills trainers must place more emphasis on interpersonal interactions
and relations, group management and communication than hard-skills
trainers.

j j
PAGE 58 DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL VOL. 36 NO. 1 2022, pp. 58-60, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1477-7282 DOI 10.1108/DLO-04-2021-0069
 H2. Compared with hard-skills trainers, soft-skills trainers must be familiar with a greater
variety of instructional methods, especially activating and open teaching methods
that aim to transfer the training content to different situations.
H3a. Trainers with a train-the-trainer certificate are more likely to teach soft-skills than
trainers without such a certificate.
H3b. Trainers with a train-the-trainer certificate agree more with the relevance of
instructional knowledge and skills than trainers without such a certificate.
H4a. Trainers with a university degree in educational science or psychology are more
likely to teach soft skills than trainers without such a degree.
H4b. Trainers with a university degree in education or psychology agree more with the
relevance of instructional knowledge and skills than trainers without such a degree.
An exploratory factor analysis was undertaken to determine the structure of the measures
and to aggregate the items into independent scales for further analysis. A one-way
multivariate analysis of variance [MANOVA] was conducted with the training content
being the independent variable and the training requirements being the dependent
variables. The mean and standard deviation of each item in both groups were calculated
and the independence of the distributions of the trainers’ qualifications in both groups
was tested.
From the factor analysis the first factor was interpreted as managing interactions; the
second factor as instructional activities. The MANOVA assessed the differences in
the factor scores of managing interactions and instructional activities between soft-
skills trainers and hard-skills trainers according to H1 and H2. The differences in
managing interactions were greater than those of instructional activities. H1 and H2
were supported by the outcome of the MANOVA as well as by the higher
assessments of the factors managing interactions and instructional activities by soft-
skills trainers.
H3a and H3b were not supported by the evidence from this procedure as the
differences were not statistically significant. With regard to H4a, the proportion of
respondents having or not having an academic degree in educational science or
psychology varied significantly between soft-skills trainers and hard-skills trainers;
thus, H4a was supported by the data. H4b was not supported by the data as no
significant difference was found after including the educational/psychological degree
as an additional factor in the MANOVA of the differences between the soft-skills trainers
and the hard-skills trainers. However, the effect of the type of training was still
significant.
The results of this study are consistent with the literature regarding hard-skills and soft-skills
training and open- and closed- training tasks. One unexpected finding was the relatively
high loading of the item providing feedback on the factor managing interactions. The
authors had considered feedback to be an instructional activity but it is possible that the
respondents considered it rather as a part of their communication and interaction with
trainees.

Practical Implications
This study has a range of practical implications including the importance of skill and
knowledge content and that of the trainers’ perceptions in determining the extent to which
what is learned is transferred into day-to-day work. The basic division of training content into
hard and soft skills and of trainers into hard- and soft-skills trainers begins the process of
defining this relationship.

VOL. 36 NO. 1 2022 j DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL j PAGE 59
 Commentary
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether hard-skills trainers and soft-skills trainers
Keywords: have different perspectives regarding the instructional skills and knowledge they require.
Instruction,
Training content, The authors note that the results reflect the subjective perceptions of instructional
Transfer of training, requirements by trainers rather than objective requirements which would need to be tested
Soft skills training, by other means.
Hard skills training,
Trainers’ knowledge and Susanne Wisshack and Sabine Hochholdinger Department of Economics, University of
skills Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.

Reference
Wisshack, S. and Hochholdinger, S. (2020), “Perceived instructional requirements of soft skills trainers
and hard skills trainers”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 405-416, doi: 10.1108/DLO-04-
2021-0069.

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