Why empathy, intuition and listening are worth more than Excel tables to create value.
The new face of business value
“How much is an hour of attentive listening?” »» The question may seem to be absurd in the eyes of a financial director. However, in a context where competition is no longer played solely on productivity or technical mastery, companies discover that one of their most precious assets does not appear anywhere in their balance sheets: soft skills.
Empathy, intuition, listening, creativity, adaptability … so many qualities long deemed secondary compared to technical skills or control of figures. However, today, they become a lever for essential growth, innovation and loyalty. “Soft skills are new financial assets”sums up a recent study by the World Economic Forum, which already places these skills at the heart of the trades of tomorrow.
From “Nice to have” to “must have”
For decades, companies have valued technical know-how above all: mastering software, managing a budget, producing a quantified analysis. The job interviews focused on diplomas, references, so -called “hard” skills.
But recent upheavals – accelerated digitalization, successive crises, hybridization of work – have changed the situation. In a moving environment, organizations need employees capable of adapting quickly, cooperating, giving meaning.
According to LinkedIn, 92 % of recruiters believe that soft skills are also, or even more important than technical skills. The professional social network also observes that 89 % of hiring failures are linked to a deficit in these human qualities, and not to technical shortcomings.
When empathy creates more value than a spreadsheet
Now, today. What makes the difference is no longer only the ability to treat figures, but to understand humans behind.
A Gallup study shows that empathetic managers increase their teams’ commitment by 23 %. However, commitment is not an abstraction: it translates directly into economic performance. Motivated employees are 17 % more productive, 21 % more profitable, and twice as likely to leave their business.
Soft Skills, loyalty tool
The cost of turnover is colossal. According to INSEE, replacing an employee can cost between 6 and 9 months’ salary, not to mention the loss of know-how, residual demotivation and the impact on customers.
However, what holds talents is no longer only salary. It is the quality of the relationship with management, recognition, the feeling of being listened to. The intuition of a manager who perceives nascent discouragement, the empathy of a colleague who takes the time to support, listening to an HR manager … All these invisible gestures drastically reduce the risk of departure.
In this sense, investment in soft skills is a disguised financial investment. A HRD of a large industrial group entrusts:
Encrypt the invisible: mission (im) possible?
There remains the delicate question: how to put numbers on the intangible? Companies, obsessed with KPIs, struggle to enhance what is not counting in euros or in Excel columns.
However, emerging tools. Some HR directions already use indicators such as:
- The net promoter internal score (ENPS): measurement of the company’s recommendation rate by its own employees.
- The retention rate: directly influenced by the quality of management and therefore by soft skills.
- The cost of absenteeism: often linked to a deleterious work climate.
- Social climate surveys: allowing to assess the feelings of the teams.
By crossing this data with financial indicators (turnover cost, productivity gain, customer satisfaction), some companies already manage to give tangible value to a priori invisible skills.
When intuition stimulates innovation
Beyond loyalty, soft skills are also a great engine of innovation. In an economy where product cycles are accelerating, it is no longer enough to have the best technologies. You also have to understand uses, anticipate needs, imagine what does not yet exist.
However, this capacity is not solely of rational logic. It requires intuition, listening to weak signals, empathy with users. Steve Jobs, in his time, explained: “It is not a question of asking people what they want, but of feeling what they will need. »»
A Deloitte study has shown that companies with a strong culture of empathy and collaboration generate 20 % more innovation than their competitors. The link is clear: listening and openness nourish collective creativity.
A financial asset … still absent from the balance sheets
Ironically fate: while businesses spend fortunes in software, patents, infrastructure, they continue to underestimate one of their main levers for value creation: human and relational capital.
Some economists speak of “share capital” to designate this set of sweet skills. But unlike patents or machines, it does not appear in accounting balance sheets. “It is an invisible asset, and that is all the difficulty,” explains a management researcher from Paris-Dauphine University.
However, the lines move. In the United States, some companies are starting to integrate soft skills into their annual reports: working climate, empathy training, managerial listening rate. The idea is simple: what is measured improves.
When HR becomes financial strategists
Traditionally confined to the administrative role, human resources gradually become value strategists. By forming, by assessing and developing soft skills, they directly contribute to the financial health of the company.
Thus, investing in training in non-violent communication, empathetic leadership, with emotional intelligence, is no longer seen as a “sweet” expenditure, but as an economic lever.
An McKinsey survey indicates that companies that invest massively in the development of soft skills of their managers note growth in their higher turnover of 12 % to those who do not invest.
AI and digital paradoxes
The rise of artificial intelligence further strengthens the value of soft skills. Anything that is automatizable will be. But listening, intuition, emotional intelligence remain, for the moment, out of reach of algorithms.
In other words, the more the machine supports rational tasks, the more humans must excel in what cannot be coded. “Human skills become our comparative advantage”, analyzes an innovation consultant.
Towards an “emotional assessment”?
Tomorrow, will we see “emotional assessments” in businesses, alongside financial balance sheets? Some experts think so. Measure the collective state of mind, the quality of relationships, the climate of trust … could become a reporting standard, in the same way as sustainable development.
In fact, the ISO 30414 standard, still little known, already offers a framework to measure the human capital of organizations. It includes indicators such as commitment, diversity, psychological health. An advance that could in depth transform the way of piloting a business.
